My mother made the best chicken soup. It was a very special meal, a rare occurrence,  because we had to catch, kill, scald, defeather, and burn the fuzz off that unlucky bird before it even made it into the kitchen. We were a family of four, and that pot of soup was a feast. After watching my Father do the deed,  I went to the kitchen to see what my mother was doing to the chicken. 

She began by cutting it into pieces at the joints so there were no bone fragments.  My parents did not waste a thing. Food was sacred and they worked hard to raise it.  I watched her trim the nails off the chicken feet at the first knuckle. She called the practice of leaving the nails on the feet barbaric, and she would make pretend retching noises talking about it, describing talons floating on a bowl, waving her arms about for added drama. She was very opinionated in a very melodramatic way.  

I saw how she lowered the whole bony chicken back into the middle of the pot. Then she placed the split breast portions, bone side down on either side of the back, after washing off any bone dust created when it was divided in two. Both legs and thighs on top of that, then the wings, feet, gizzards, comb, and also the long neck in one piece.  She poured in water to cover, an onion cut into quarters, some black peppercorns, and some fresh parsley stems tied with string. She turned the heat to come up to a simmer, then turned it down until it was barely simmering, and let it simmer for a little while. Now and then she would skim the foam that came to the top off. 

In another bowl of water, she began to clean and cut vegetables into large chunks, an onion, carrots, sweet pepper, and sometimes potato, or kohlrabi if there was some growing.  She took another bunch of fresh parsley and tied it into a bouquet. Layering all the vegetables on top of the chicken with the parsley on top.  While that was cooking she would make rice, noodles, grated pasta, or my favorite; big fat fluffy dumplings called “Gris Nokedli”.  It was a huge dumpling the size of a small russet potato. It was made with a type of farina wheat and it was grainy, fluffy, and sweet all at the same time.  

At dinner time, we would get a bowl of soup with noodles, and a piece of chicken, usually the leg or thigh for my brother and me. My mother took the wings, tips trimmed off. My father took the back and the neck, which he cleaned off with surgical precision. He said the meat on the bones was the tastiest and tenderest.  I think the breast meat was saved for sandwiches for my father, and he cleaned off those bones too.  

Sometimes the vegetables varied, depending on garden production, green peas and turnips made the broth much sweeter, as did the little white peppers and the onions. The big green peppers had an edge of bitterness sometimes. Once in a great while a corn cob made it into the mix. I liked the noodles the best, then the carrots and potatoes. I still do. 

I thought that was the best chicken soup in the world, for a great many years. When I began to make mine, it wasn’t the same. I have learned everyone thinks the soup they grew up with is the best. I have made and tested a lot of variations and many were fantastic. But taste has a huge nostalgia component I think, while smells go right to memory and viscera. I know, because a smell can whoosh me back in time, and activate a belly grumble and mental hunger in a split second.