Book excerpt: Throughout history and around the world, soup has been used to bring comfort, warmth, and good health. A bowl of soup can symbolize so much—celebrations, major life passages, and the everyday. Inspired by Patricia Solley’s website, SoupSong.com, and organized according to function—soups to heal the sick, recover from childbirth, soothe a hangover, entice the object of your affection, and mark special occasions and holidays—An Exaltation of Soups showcases more than a hundred of the best soup recipes of all time, including: • Festive Wedding Soup with Meatballs from Italy • Egyptian Fava Bean Soup, made to give strength to convalescents • Creamy Fennel Soup with Shallots and Orange Spice from Catalonia—perfect for wooing a lover • Hungarian “Night Owl” Soup, designed to chase a hangover • Spicy Pumpkin and Split Pea Soup from Morocco, served to celebrate Rosh Hashanah • Tanzanian Creamy Coconut-Banana Soup for Kwanzaa Spiced with soup riddles, soup proverbs, soup poetry, and informative sidebars about the lore and legends of soup through the ages, An Exaltation of Soups is a steaming bowl of goodness that is sure to satisfy. From the Trade Paperback edition.