A pot was never boiled by beauty.
Old Irish saying
In most peasant societies, the traditional main meal of the day was dispensed from the soup or stew pot which simmered over the stove during the day. There was no real distinction between a soup and a stew, as they were as hearty and robust as the people could afford to make them, adding whatever ingredients were available at the time – hence the expression ‘pot luck’.
If a choice of ingredients was available, they would make dishes like the still-famous Dankey stew. ‘Dankey’ means slightly drunk, so it is not surprising that one of the main ingredients of this stew is a hefty measure of Irish stout. Since this not only adds a rich flavour but also tenderises the meat, it was often added to stews, especially at a time when the water was not always safe to drink and everyone in the family would tend to drink beer of one kind or another.
Because most farmers kept cows and made their own butter and cream, these were also common ingredients of soups and stews.
During the Great Famine, soup kitchens proliferated throughout Ireland and many people relied entirely on their daily quota of this free soup for survival when their potato crops were hit by the blight. It was Alexis Soyer, the chef at London’s Reform Club in Pall Mall, London, who wrote the official recipe for the universally dispensed soup. During 1848 alone, a total of 8,750 men, women and children were sustained daily on Soyer’s soup.