Soups

If you’ve ever eaten it, you will know that there is absolutely nothing subtle about sopa de pedra: northern Portugal’s answer to Italian minestrones or French and Spanish pottages. The perplexing translation of its name is ‘stone soup’, the story being that a penniless and hungry traveler arrives in a village and announces that he is able to conjure the tastiest soup for the whole village from nothing more than a large pan of water and a stone. These are provided and, whilst solemnly stirring the pot, he suggests that though the soup will be quite delicious it would be improved with cabbage and a little chorizo sausage. These are eagerly fetched and a little later he repeats the suggestion that perhaps an onion and some beans would be a small improvement – and so on until he has a fine catch-all dish. Improvisatory recipes like this have always been the inspiration behind soups at the Eagle. Some of them are thick and heartwarming, the kind of soups that make damp winters seem not so very bad. Others are brothy and restorative. In the summer, they might be chilled. One thing unites all of them: in a pub that celebrates one-plate eating, soup should provide an entire meal in a bowl.