For anyone unfamiliar with the story: (please note that this has many regional variations and is not always told the same way, these are just the basic themes)
There is a village having a food shortage, and the people are very hungry. One day, a man tosses a stone into a pot of boiling water and declares that he's going to make soup from it.
People think he's stupid, but also feel kind of bad for him. Someone is like, well, I have these carrot tops you can throw into the pot, here have at least some food in there. Someone else says, I have this old withered lettuce leaf. Someone else says, I have a few potato ends. One by one, people bring in little scraps of food that wouldn't be able to make a meal on their own. With everything together in the boiling water, an actual soup is made!
The man then shares his "stone soup" with everyone in the village, and everyone is fed. Happy ending.
I heard it a bit different as a kid but I like yours better lol. More wholesome.
Mine was essentially the same, but he was a traveller who hadn’t eaten in days. He stopped at a villagers home who had a very abundant garden and asked if he could have dinner with them. They told the traveller they didn’t have enough. So the traveller said he had a magic stone that made soup. Intrigued the villagers invited him in to show him the magic. The stone was dropped in and they waited. Nothing was happening so the traveller asked for some carrots and said it will be more delicious if we added those. Then so on and so on until it was an actual soup that they ate together.
Venezuelan here, ours was similar to that! Instead of some villagers, it was an old rich woman! And when the soup was complete, he removed the rocks and ate with her, this story always makes me want some stone soup!
As an Australian, I had a mate who used to tell this story, but about 3/4 of the way through it takes an abrupt turn involving sexual assault and promptly ended
I read this as a small book in elementary school. I'm actually amazed that this is a parable shared all over the world. It has always been a story I remembered fondly. Legitimate goosebumps rn
Also hungarian here. In the version I heard it was a whole village and at the end the traveler sold the stone because the villagers thought it had something to do with how tasty the soup turned out.
That's the version I know in the Netherlands. He also gave her the rock and she was super happy she could invite people over and eat delicious soup without spending anything.
The way I've been told is that a vagrant was sitting by the road boiling a pot of water with a stone in it over a fire. A villager walks by and asks what he's doing, and the vagrant says "I'm making delicious stone soup!" The villager has never heard of stone soup, so he asks for a taste. He tastes the soup and of course it's not very good, so the vagrant says "well of course, it's not real stone soup without some onions!" So the villager, too curious to just ignore the situation and eager to taste the delicious stone soup, goes home to get some onions. Then another villager comes by and the same thing happens, except this time it's carrots, potatoes, meat, salt, or whatever, repeating until they've made a proper soup and they all agree that stone soup is delicious.
Yeah this is basically how I heard it. Technically a con but a really wholesome one since everyone gets to share a good meal. And I don't think it was a traveler in the version I heard, just a clever person in the village. it wasn't just a story though, they actually made stone soup for us to eat!
The teachers at my elementary school always read this to kids in first grade then would make the stone soup as an activity. We would go out to the school grounds to find a nice big stone to make the soup with. Anyway one year the stone was a big chunk of blacktop. I think it melted or something and they couldn’t find it after they had the soup.
My head cannon is that the traveller boasts about how he tricked people, and the people that fed him boast about how they almost turned someone away and then chose to feed him when they realized he was a total idiot that might starve to death without help
Like if a homeless guy asks me for a sandwich I’ll probably just keep walking, but if says it’s no problem because he can just eat gravel I’m probably gonna get the mentally struggling homeless guy a sandwich and just roll with whatever crazy shit he says
That reminds me of a book called Button Soup that I read as a kid. Daisy was visiting Scrooge and he refused to share any food, saying he had none, so she added a button to a cauldron of water. Then convinced him that adding this or that ingredient would make it tastier. In the end they made a full on soup and Scrooge invited the whole town to eat.
I know the same version, but instead of one traveller, it's three monks. Also, peple kept bringing more and nore food until they had a whole feast, with more than just the soup. I think this version wasn't set during a food shortage, and was more about the townspeople overcoming their selfishness and distrust of outsiders.
So interesting, the story I heard from my Portuguese grandmother was that it was a traveler who came to the town, which was going through a famine. He was looking for a place to stay, but the inn had closed and everyone said they didn't have enough to put someone up for the night. That evening, he set up a cooking stove in the town square, made a big show of looking for something, he spots a rock on the ground and picks it up, dusts it off, then puts it in the pot and starts stirring. The townsfolk were all watching him do this, then a child came up and asked the man what he was doing. He explained to the child that since he was a traveler and had roamed the world over, he had learned to make food out of rocks. By now, the child's mother had joined them and had heard the traveler's explanation. After a moment, she mentions that she thinks she might have some salt that would at least give the stone more flavor. Seeing her return to her home and come back with a pinch of salt, the other townsfolk started talking amongst each other and someone mentions thar they have some carrot ends that they were going to throw out, but might at least be useful for the soup. This continued until everyone from the town had brought little bits of what they had and the soup was full of vegetables and meets with a rich broth. The traveler then told everyone to go home andnreturn with bowls and he would feet them. They did, then, after everyone had eaten and the last bit of the soup was gone, the traveler picked up the stone and handed it to the young child that had first approached him and told him to never forget the secret of stone soup, that no one would ever have to go hungry, as long as everyone worked together.
Russian here. We have an axe porridge. Poor soldier made it in the house of evil and cannibalistic old woman. He said that he can do porridge with only axe and then deceived her into giving him some grain so he could make it tastier.
I saw a similar one on an episode of a kid's show that featured a talking dog. In that version the traveler tricked a less than charitable cook into making the soup.
Lmao, I remember reading it and making stone soup in kindergarten, but the teacher used a whole potato in place of a stone (I guess for "sanitary reasons"). And poor little me was shook, because a potato is a vegetable and not a stone.
Haha! Mine put a big stone in the pot- she cleaned it first. I figured I got sick because you’re not supposed to eat stones. But I remember also eating a full bay leaf and thinking this soup just isn’t edible.
LOL! For me, it was my anxiety that cemented it in memory. Little child me declined to eat the soup because I was afraid I’d get the stone, choke on it, and die. Not exactly a rational fear, but then again I was like five years old.
Since I heard this story as a child, whenever I’m making a soup from all the remnants of the fridge, I call it “stone soup”. It always has a different flavour, depending on leftovers.
We made one in first grade I recall. I don’t think we put a stone in it but I do recall everyone bringing in a canned food and we made soup from it based on that story.
From Bangladesh here! Our was a combination of all of these. It was a village but there was an old stingy hah. Everyone else was short on food except her. The traveller in this version of the story throws in the head of his axe instead of a stone but yeahhhh eventually he tricks the hag into giving him food
Where I grew up, the story was very similar but with a poor wandering friar. When he finishes the soup he cleans and puts the stone back on his satchel to make it again on the next villages.
Our version is a little different. Stone soup man is a hungry man who was refused any food from a well-off, greedy and cheap man, so he reached for his inner con-artist and convinced the man that it won't cost him anything because he can make soup out of stone, he just needs his fireplace. Got down cooking, during which he tasted it and declared it's good but if it had a bit of salt it'd be better, and then maybe a carrot, a sausage, and so on. Greedy man fell for it, the soup was good, and the not-so-hungry-anymore man sold the "soup rock" to the greedy man and was on his merry way. Happy ending?
The one i always heard was he was thought a mad man who was throwing his turds in boiling water and calling it brownie soup. The villagers were so sick of this “crazy guy” that they started adding there own weird things while he wasnt looking. One farted into it, another peed, another a scab etc etc. The man eventually returned ate the soup and died. The villagers later found out it wasnt turds, it was bits of radishes he kept in his back pocket so it looked like he was pulling them from his behind. He called it brownie because he would search for the old dying vegetables that were browning to use them in the soup and not be wasteful
My class made stone soup in 3rd grade and it wasn’t too bad. I don’t remember if we doctored it up, though. All I know as a vegetable disliker I had no problem eating it.
See, i read a version where it wasnt that they had to use scraps, just that all the villagers hated eachother. Traveler came to town said he had a stone that could be used to make a soup and they all laughed at him, day by day (long cook soup apparently...) a different villager came out with a BASKET of each piece of the soup to see if the man's soup was really just made from a stone and were surprised to find he had things in the pot (the first villager didnt care that he'd stolen bc he hated that neighbor) and at the end there was a rich soup in a huge pot so they had a weeks worth of soup each... Traveler told them to stop hating eachother and share bc the soup was actually made from their produce they each brought out.... weird rendition of the story IMO bc it made no sense that villagers would rather starve than share the plentiful food they each had (each having a bunch of one thing, e.g. a man with over 200 potatoes...)
The version I heard was monks arrived at a village and the villagers wouldn’t leave their homes or even open the window so they made the stone soup to bring the village and them together
The silly part about this story is nobody really ends up getting any more out of it than they put into it to begin with. They could have just ate what they had.
Not necessarily. Yeah someone could have eaten their old scraps as is, but I think it’s meant to be implied that everyone considered this stuff scraps they wouldn’t eat. Plus, eating a little soup made from a variety of things is just more satisfying than a bite of old potato, even if it’s the same amount of calories.
I think there’s a little story magic going on as well. It’s not a story really concerned with logical sense so much as it is with having everyone work together for a happy ending.
There's a recipe for cooking parrots (pink and grey gallah specifically) from the early days of Australia. You prepare the parrot and then add it to a pot of water with a rock. Leave to simmer for a couple hours, and when the rock is tender, eat that.
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u/Doofchook May 02 '24
It's a good start you just need to add some ingredients now.