It’s September now. The times are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder and just about each vacant indoor house has been unexpectedly transformed right into a Spirit Halloween. The autumn climate additionally marks the start of soup season, thus reigniting the age outdated debate: Is soup actually a meal?
This query was first posed en masse by Seinfeld, which, come to consider it, had a shocking variety of soup-themed episodes.
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In Season Six’s “The Soup,” Jerry reluctantly accepts an Armani go well with from hack comic Kenny Bania in change for a meal at a pleasant restaurant. They meet up for dinner at Mendy’s, Jerry orders the salmon for himself, however Bania opts to get soup and “save” the meal for an additional time. An irate Jerry argues that the soup continues to be a meal. His logic is later interrogated by Elaine, who proposes that Bania’s consommé shouldn’t be thought of a meal as a result of it’s not a “hardy soup” like “chicken gumbo or matzah ball or mushroom barley.” However she concedes that it may be thought of a meal as soon as Bania crumbled crackers into it.
Whereas Jerry’s primary objection to Bania’s logic is that the act of sitting with him in a restaurant ought to in and of itself rely as a meal, the soup-meal debate has moved properly past the confines of the present. Even now, 30 years later, persons are nonetheless squabbling over the right classification of soup.
Some say that “soup isn’t a meal until it’s thick and creamy.” Others have identified that “soup can have all of your meals teams lined in a single shot.” In line with the Los Angeles Occasions, the “soup-for-dinner food plan” is an “simple, scrumptious solution to drop extra pounds.” So if persons are having it for dinner each single night time, it should be a meal, proper? Then once more, is it actually simply an appetizer?
Earlier this yr, Merriam-Webster tried to settle the matter as soon as and for all by mentioning {that a} meal is outlined as “an act or the time of consuming a portion of meals to fulfill urge for food,” and subsequently, “soup is technically a meal.”
However then once more, the real-life Mendy’s, the New York deli that served because the inspiration for Bania’s favourite eatery, seems to aspect with the comic/Ovaltine fanatic. They promote soup, however with half of a sandwich, as a part of their Seinfeld-themed choices. It’s actually marketed with the slogan: “Soup and half a sandwich, now that’s a meal!”
Maybe the perfect argument that soup ought to rely as a meal was made by a later episode of Seinfeld. “The Soup Nazi” means that soup might be so satisfying and filling that one’s knees can’t assist however buckle afterwards. Even Bania must admit that these soups qualify as meals.
Looking back, it’s odd that Jerry by no means introduced this up with him on the time.
You (sure, you) ought to observe JM on Twitter (if it nonetheless exists by the point you’re studying this).
