{"id":3988,"date":"2018-02-05T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T16:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=3988"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:58:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:58:47","slug":"italian-wedding-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/05\/italian-wedding-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Wedding Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 5, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up I never really understood why this was called Wedding Soup. \u00a0It was NEVER served at weddings.<\/p>\n

It was mostly served at home, unceremoniously.<\/p>\n

The fact that it was unceremonious is a shame.\u00a0 It is a wonderful soup and, being honest, takes a bit of work to pull together.\u00a0 Both the soup, and the soup-maker, in my estimation, deserve a bit of attention.<\/p>\n

Although it takes some work, it doesn\u2019t require much in the way of heard-earned skills like frosting a cake or making pie crust.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a bit of slogging through a series of steps.<\/p>\n

This is a beloved soup among Americans of Italian descent.\u00a0 Interestingly, my in-laws who are actually from Italy had never heard of it until I made it for this blog!<\/p>\n

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But back to the \u201cwedding\u201d part.\u00a0 I did a bit of internet research (thanks Google!).\u00a0 Actually, I hesitate to call it \u201cresearch.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m old school.\u00a0 I remember when doing research meant hours upon hours spent in libraries looking at actual hardcopy materials.\u00a0 It almost doesn\u2019t seem fair to sit on my sofa with my laptop and read materials served up by Google based on natural language questions and call it research.<\/p>\n

The \u201cnatural language\u201d part is interesting too.\u00a0 In the \u201cold\u201d days, if you found an article that was relevant to the research topic, you would look at the articles referenced by the author and find, potentially, other relevant articles.\u00a0 But they would all be older than the first article.\u00a0 This is where the \u201cScience Citation Index\u201d came into play.<\/p>\n

The Index was a series of periodically published volumes that listed all the articles that cited a particular article in their bibliography.\u00a0 With the Science Citation Index, you could start with a relevant article and then work forwards finding all the newer articles that had cited that article.<\/p>\n

Now I just tell Google what I\u2019m interested in and I get a bunch of (almost always) relevant \u201chits!\u201d\u00a0 Google is even nice enough to tell me how many hits there are and what fraction of a second it took Google to identify them.<\/p>\n

Even when I\u2019m researching a biomedical topic I sit on my sofa with my laptop and search the National Library of Medicine.\u00a0 The search language is a bit more arcane than the natural language used by Google but it still feels like cheating compared to slogging around a library.\u00a0 I can even have the full article delivered to my laptop so I don\u2019t have to figure out what library has the publication I need.<\/p>\n

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So, what did I learn from my Google search?<\/p>\n

It appears (at least it\u2019s a plausible theory) that Wedding Soup is an inaccurate translation of Minestra Maritata or Married Soup; apparently so-named because of the way the different ingredients marry together so well.<\/p>\n

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I’m guessing that many Americans with no affiliation to Italy have never had escarole.<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interestingly, my husband\u2019s Tuscan grandmother would use up small amounts of different types of dried pasta, perhaps putting them into a soup or serving them with a simple sauce.\u00a0 She referred to this as Pasta Maritata because she was marrying the different types of pasta to create a dish.<\/p>\n

If this theory is correct, I am perplexed by the inaccurate translation but, be that as it may, the soup is wonderful.\u00a0 I urge you to give it a try.<\/p>\n

I like breaking up the work over two days, especially since I like to make a long-simmered broth as the base of the soup.\u00a0 My mother didn\u2019t do this.\u00a0 Once the chicken was cooked, it was removed and shredded and the broth was used without additional simmering to make the soup.\u00a0 It shaves about 3 hours off of the prep time.\u00a0 But, since making broth is mostly hands off, and the improvement in flavor is dramatic, I simmer everything a bit longer before straining and discarding the solids.<\/p>\n

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If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com<\/a> and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven\u2019t seen Bertha\u2019s Flan<\/a> or Melinda\u2019s Drunken Prunes<\/a>, take a look.\u00a0 They will give you an idea of what I\u2019m looking for.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Italian Wedding Soup<\/h2>\n
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If you don\u2019t want to use the white center of the escarole, start with two heads and just use the dark green parts. The pale inner portion can be served in a salad or cooked in a number of ways. I like to divide up the work over two days, making the broth on the first day and the remainder on the second day. It\u2019s perfectly feasible to do it all on the same day, however. I always keep a stash of rinds from Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino cheeses in the freezer. They add great flavor to broths, beans, and an array of other dishes.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>5 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>8 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>18<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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