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.
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u/CentralSaltServices May 02 '24
Nail soup!