A perpetual stew, also known as forever soup, hunter's pot
or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever foodstuffs one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way, and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary.
Such foods can continue cooking for decades or longer, if properly maintained. The concept is often a common element in descriptions of
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
inns. Foods prepared in a perpetual
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 a ...
have been described as being flavorful due to the manner in which the ingredients blend together.
Examples
Perpetual stews are speculated to have been common in
medieval cuisine
Medieval cuisine includes foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century. During this period, diets and cooking changed less than they did in t ...
, often as
pottage or
pot-au-feu:
Between August 2014 and April 2015, a New York restaurant served broth from the same perpetual stew (a
master stock) for over eight months.
A batch of
pot-au-feu was claimed by one writer to be maintained as a perpetual stew in
Perpignan
Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...
from the 15th century until
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, when it ran out of ingredients to keep the stew going due to the
German occupation
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...
.
The tradition of perpetual stew is also kept alive in some Southern and Eastern Asian countries:
Wattana Panich restaurant in
Bangkok
Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populati ...
, Thailand, has continued to maintain the broth from the same perpetual stew for over years ().
The food industry in Japan still maintains perpetual stews in certain traditional dishes, for instance in
ramen
is a Japanese noodle dish. It consists of served in a broth; common flavors are soy sauce and miso, with typical toppings including , nori (dried seaweed), menma (bamboo shoots), and scallions. Ramen has its roots in Chinese noodle di ...
and
oden:
Otafuku, one of the oldest oden restaurants in Japan, has been heating up the same batch of broth every day since 1945.
Ingredients
Various ingredients can be used in a perpetual stew, such as
root vegetables and
tuber
Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing ...
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 on ...
,
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'', na ...
,
garlic
Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus '' Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Welsh onion and Chinese onion. It is native to South Asia, Central Asia and northeas ...
,
parsnip,
turnip
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 ...
, etc.) and various meats.
In popular culture
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, hi ...
references a perpetual stew served on the
Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually someth ...
in his novel ''
Idoru''.
In ''
A Song of Ice and Fire
''A Song of Ice and Fire'' is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. He began the first volume of the series, '' A Game of Thrones'', in 1991, and it was published in 1996. Martin, who i ...
'' by
George R. R. Martin,
Arya eats from a perpetual stew, into which she contributes a pigeon, while in the slums of Kings Landing.
See also
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perpetual Stew
Medieval cuisine
Stews