The holiday daze is over and here we go again, maybe a bit tired and overwhelmed with our new year’s resolutions or maybe combating a nasty virus, but ultimately life is slow and the winter blues are getting a grip on us.
Most of us have certainly noticed some of the symptoms of SAD – seasonal affective disorder (isn’t that an ironic abbreviation?). It is a kind of depression linked to the change of seasons, characterised generally by mood swings and low motivation and in its full effect through the winter months.
So, naturally, one might want to think of ways to lessen the winter blues. A way to go is fitness or physical exercising of any kind. Either going to the gym or going for a walk will surely boost your energy flow and make you feel better. The other foolproof way to instant happiness is, of course, comfort food. Soups and stews might be the best thing in the whole winter concept, mind you!
Soup – History
It comes as no surprise that the word soup hopped into the English language from the French soupe in the 17th century and by that time, the Brits suddenly stopped making the same old “broth” and “pottage”, and started boiling fancy “soups”.
However, the etymology of our word leads us back to the family of the Germanic languages, where sop meant “to consume something liquid”. From where it jumped into Latin, circa 13th century, with the significance of a piece of bread eaten soaked in broth. After all, who would resist to not dip pieces of fresh bread into a lovely smelling boiling mixture of meat (optional), vegetables and seasoning?
In print, the word soup appeared for the first time in the English translation of Francois Rabelais’ first of five books on the life of Gargantua and Pantagruel in 1653: “Then made they ready store of Carbonadoes..and good fat soupes, or brewis with sippets.” The translation was done by Thomas Urquhart, who penned into English the first three books.
When comes to the primordial soup, believed to have provided the perfect boiling settings for the origin of life, the term was born in 1924, introduced by the Soviet biologist Alexander Oparin. And 5 years later, the British-Indian scientist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane explained the concept to the British audience in The Rationalist Annual: “When ultra-violet light acts on a mixture of water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia, a vast variety of organic substances are made… Before the origin of life they must have accumulated till the primitive oceans reached the consistency of hot dilute soup.”
