![Minestrone soup](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Minestrone_soup.jpg)
Minestrone (; ) is a thick
soup
Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot (but may be cool or cold), that is made by combining ingredients of meat or vegetables with stock, milk, or water. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ing ...
of
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
origin made with
vegetable
Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...
s, often with the addition of
pasta
Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are som ...
or
rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
, sometimes both. Common ingredients include
bean
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
s,
onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...
s,
celery
Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, lea ...
,
carrot
The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', nat ...
s,
leaf vegetable
Leaf vegetables, also called leafy greens, pot herbs, vegetable greens, or simply greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots. Leaf vegetables eaten raw in a salad can be called salad gre ...
s,
stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
,
parmesan cheese
Parmesan ( it, Parmigiano Reggiano; ) is an Italian hard, granular cheese produced from cows’ milk and aged at least 12 months.
It is named after two of the areas which produce it, the provinces
A province is almost always an administrat ...
and
tomato
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...
es.
There is no set
recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
His ...
for minestrone, since it can usually be made out of whatever vegetables are at one's disposal. It can be
vegetarian
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Vegetarianism m ...
, contain
meat
Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...
, or contain an animal bone-based stock (such as
chicken stock
Stock, sometimes called bone broth, is a savory cooking liquid that forms the basis of many dishes particularly soups, stews, and sauces. Making stock involves simmering animal bones, meat, seafood, or vegetables in water or wine, often for an ...
). Food author
Angelo Pellegrini
Angelo Pellegrini (1904 – 1991) was a writer of books about the pleasures of growing and making your own food and wine, and about the Italian immigrant experience. He was also a professor of English Literature at the University of Washing ...
claimed that the base of minestrone is bean broth, and that
borlotti beans (also called Roman beans) "are the beans to use for genuine minestrone".
History
Some of the earliest origins of minestrone soup pre-date the expansion of the Latin tribes of Rome into what became the
Roman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom (also referred to as the Roman monarchy, or the regal period of ancient Rome) was the earliest period of Roman history when the city and its territory were ruled by kings. According to oral accounts, the Roman Kingdom began wi ...
(later
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kin ...
and
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
), when the local diet was "vegetarian by necessity" and consisted mostly of vegetables, such as
onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...
s,
lentil
The lentil (''Lens culinaris'' or ''Lens esculenta'') is an edible legume. It is an annual plant known for its lens-shaped seeds. It is about tall, and the seeds grow in pods, usually with two seeds in each. As a food crop, the largest pro ...
s,
cabbage
Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&nb ...
,
garlic
Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus ''Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Allium fistulosum, Welsh onion and Allium chinense, Chinese onion. It is native to South A ...
,
broad beans
''Vicia faba'', commonly known as the broad bean, fava bean, or faba bean, is a species of vetch, a flowering plant in the pea and bean family Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated as a crop for human consumption, and also as a cover crop. Variet ...
,
mushrooms
A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing Sporocarp (fungi), fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
The standard for the na ...
,
carrot
The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', nat ...
s,
asparagus
Asparagus, or garden asparagus, folk name sparrow grass, scientific name ''Asparagus officinalis'', is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus ''Asparagus''. Its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable.
It was once classified in ...
, and
turnips
The turnip or white turnip (''Brassica rapa'' subsp. ''rapa'') is a root vegetable commonly grown in temperate climates worldwide for its white, fleshy taproot. The word ''turnip'' is a compound of ''turn'' as in turned/rounded on a lathe and '' ...
.
During this time, the main dish of a meal would have been ''pulte'', a simple but filling porridge of
spelt
Spelt (''Triticum spelta''), also known as dinkel wheat or hulled wheat, is a species of wheat that has been cultivated since approximately 5000 BC.
Spelt was an important staple food in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. No ...
flour cooked in salt water, to which whatever vegetables that were available would have been added.
[
It was not until the 2nd century ]BCE
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...
, when Rome had conquered Italy and monopolized the commercial and road networks, that a huge diversity of products flooded the capital and began to change their diet, and by association, the diet of Italy,[ most notably with the more frequent inclusion of meats, including as a stock for soups.
Spelt flour was also removed from soups, as bread had been introduced into the Roman diet by the Greeks, and ''pulte'' became a meal largely for the poor.]
The ancient Romans recognized the health benefits of a simple or "frugal" diet (from the Latin ''fruges'', the common name given to cereals, vegetables and legumes) and thick vegetable soups and vegetables remained a staple.[
Marcus ]Apicius
''Apicius'', also known as ''De re culinaria'' or ''De re coquinaria'' (''On the Subject of Cooking'') is a collection of Roman cookery recipes. It is thought to have been compiled in the fifth century AD. Its language is in many ways closer ...
's ancient cookbook ''De Re Coquinaria'' described ''polus'', a Roman soup dating back to 30 CE made up of farro
Farro refers to the grains of three wheat species, which are sold dried and cooked in water until soft. It is eaten plain or is often used as an ingredient in salads, soups, and other dishes.
Definition
Farro is an ethnobotanical term for thr ...
, chickpeas, and fava
''Vicia faba'', commonly known as the broad bean, fava bean, or faba bean, is a species of vetch, a flowering plant in the pea and bean family Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated as a crop for human consumption, and also as a cover crop. Var ...
beans, with onions, garlic, lard, and greens thrown in.
As eating habits and ingredients changed in Italy, so did minestrone. Apicius updates the ''pultes'' and ''pulticulae'' with fancy trimmings such as cooked brains and wine.
The tradition of not losing rural roots continues today, and minestrone is now known in Italy as belonging to the style of cooking called "cucina povera" (literally "poor kitchen"), meaning dishes that have rustic, rural roots, as opposed to "cucina nobile", or the cooking style of the aristocracy and nobles.
Etymology
The word ''minestrone'', meaning a thick vegetable soup
Vegetable soup is a common soup prepared using vegetables and leaf vegetables as primary ingredients. It dates to ancient history, and is a mass-produced food product in contemporary times.
Overview
Vegetable soup is prepared using vegetables, ...
, is attested in English from 1871. It is from Italian ''minestrone'', the augmentative
An augmentative (abbreviated ) is a morphological form of a word which expresses greater intensity, often in size but also in other attributes. It is the opposite of a diminutive.
Overaugmenting something often makes it grotesque and so in so ...
form of ''minestra'', "soup", or more literally, "that which is served", from ''minestrare'', "to serve" and cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
with ''administer'' as in "to administer a remedy".
Because of its unique origins and the absence of a fixed recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
His ...
, minestrone varies widely across Italy depending on traditional cooking times, ingredients, and season
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...
. Minestrone ranges from a thick and dense texture with very boiled-down vegetable
Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...
s, to a more brothy soup with large quantities of diced and lightly cooked vegetables; it may also include meat
Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...
s.
In modern Italian there are three words corresponding to the English word ''soup'': ''zuppa'', which is used in the sense of tomato soup
Tomato soup is a soup with tomatoes as the primary ingredient. It can be served hot or cold, and may be made in a variety of ways. It may be smooth in texture, and there are also recipes that include chunks of tomato, cream, chicken or vegetabl ...
, or fish soup
Fish soup is a food made by combining fish or seafood with vegetables and stock, juice, water, or another liquid. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a ...
; ''minestra'', which is used in the sense of a more substantial soup such as a vegetable soup, and also for "dry" soups, namely pasta dishes; and ''minestrone'', which means a very substantial or large soup or stew
A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. A stew needs to have raw ingredients added to the gravy. Ingredients in a stew can include any combination of vegetables and ...
, though the meaning has now come to be associated with this particular dish.
Regional variations
''Minestrone alla Genovese'' is a variant typical of Liguria
Liguria (; lij, Ligûria ; french: Ligurie) is a Regions of Italy, region of north-western Italy; its Capital city, capital is Genoa. Its territory is crossed by the Alps and the Apennine Mountains, Apennines Mountain chain, mountain range and is ...
, which contains greater use of herbs, including pesto
Pesto () is a sauce that traditionally consists of crushed garlic, European pine nuts, coarse salt, basil leaves, and hard cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano (also known as Parmesan cheese) or Pecorino Sardo (cheese made from sheep's milk), al ...
.
''Minestra'' is a variant from Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
, which prominently features ''kunserva'' (a thick tomato paste), potatoes, kohlrabi
Kohlrabi (pronounced ; scientific name ''Brassica oleracea'' Gongylodes Group (horticulture), Group), also called German turnip or turnip cabbage, is a Biennial plant, biennial vegetable, a low, stout cultivar of wild cabbage. It is a cultivar o ...
, cauliflower
Cauliflower is one of several vegetables in the species ''Brassica oleracea'' in the genus ''Brassica'', which is in the Brassicaceae (or mustard) family. It is an annual plant that reproduces by seed. Typically, only the head is eaten – the ...
, and sometimes spaghetti.
''Imbakbaka'' or ''Mbakbaka'', is a type of stew in Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...
made with pasta, chickpeas, Bzar spice, and meat. It originated through colonization from the Italian Empire
The Italian colonial empire ( it, Impero coloniale italiano), known as the Italian Empire (''Impero Italiano'') between 1936 and 1943, began in Africa in the 19th century and comprised the colonies, protectorates, concessions and dependencie ...
.
See also
* Pasta e fagioli
''Pasta e fagioli'' (), meaning "pasta and beans", is a traditional Italian pasta soup. It is often called pasta fasul or pasta fazool in the New York Italian dialect, derived from its Neapolitan name, ''pasta e fasule''.
Preparation
Recipes fo ...
* List of Italian soups
This is a list of notable Italian soups. Soups are sometimes served as the '' primo'', or first course in Italian cuisine. In some regions of Italy, such as Veneto, soup is eaten more than pasta.
Italian soups
* Acquacotta – originally a ...
* List of legume dishes
This is a list of legume dishes. A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their food grain seed (e.g. beans and lentils, or generally pulse) ...
* List of soups
This is a list of notable soups. Soups have been made since Ancient history, ancient times.
Some soups are served with large chunks of meat or vegetables left in the liquid, while others are served as a broth. A broth is a flavored liquid usua ...
* List of vegetable soups
This is a list of vegetable soups. Vegetable soup is a common soup prepared using vegetables and leaf vegetables as primary ingredients.
Vegetable soups
* Atama soup – a vegetable and palm nut soup that originates in South Nigeria.
*
*
* ...
References
{{Soups
Italian cuisine
Maltese cuisine
Italian soups
Italian inventions
Vegetable soups