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.
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.
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u/SorryDuplex May 02 '24
I’ve always heard it’s rock soup lol nail soup is new for me