It begins, like always, with tears. With little spiderwebs of red spinning themselves across the creamy whites of my eyes, as the pungent aroma of onions fills the kitchen.
Despite the many tips and tricks available online, I’ve yet to find a method that consistently works to stave off the crying. So I resign myself to it, letting go of my fear of crying in front of others to cook something amazing.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the attention that I get from making this soup for my family. The aroma of the caramelized onions as people come in the house always receives praise. And every year, when I bring out the ramequins of soup dripping with gooey hot cheese, there’s a rush of excitement that fills the room.
My uncle made the soup for years. But in 2015, he passed the baton to me, trusting me with the patience it takes to cook the soup the right way. Despite its ostentatious presentation, French onion soup is a conceptually simple dish to make – not too many ingredients, and straightforward steps. There’s no fear of accidentally scrambling eggs like in a hollandaise sauce, nor a delicate ingredient balance required so that it doesn’t collapse like a soufflé. What makes French onion soup difficult, especially making it for 20 people, is that it requires so much active work. It requires fighting through stinging eyes to chop onion after onion after onion. It requires near constant stirring to ensure the onions caramelize, rather than burn. And most of all, it requires patience, as that magical jammy sweetness takes an hour or more to achieve.
There are no shortcuts with French onion soup, no methods to make it quickly and efficiently. It spits in the face of the great American value of convenience. And yet, I’m drawn to it for precisely that reason.
Before we had gas stoves, before we had cities, before we were even the humans of today, we had the great inconvenience of needing to feed ourselves. Hunger has driven us towards innovation, and towards violence. In the name of hunger, we have developed farming and civilization. In the name of hunger, we have driven entire species to extinction. And in the name of hunger, we have gathered together in circles and shared meal after meal.
The current consensus is that early humans started using fire around 800,000 to a million years ago. These early humans were living at the height of the Pleistocene period, the time we think of as the Ice Age. They walked alongside mammoths, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats. Their world was cold and harsh, with glaciers covering nearly a third of the planet. It’s almost no surprise that out of this unforgiving landscape, humans tamed fire for the first time. Who knows if humans would still be here today had our prehistoric ancestors not figured that one out…
When I think of the frozen reality that early humans endured, it feels so far beyond my comprehension. They lived in small, nomadic groups. They likely did not have spoken language. Every winter, the ability to start a fire was the difference between life and death. And yet, we’ve both engaged in the same ritual of cooking food over a flame. We’ve both gathered together with loved ones, offering each their share, and found ourselves just a little warmer.
I often say that “cooking is the thing I’m best at.” Not because I don’t have other interests or hobbies that I’m good at, but because I’ve been cooking for so much of my life. It’s the skill I’ve been fostering the longest, and it sits at the intersection of creativity and necessity. And when I cook a meal for the people I love, I feel the kind of serenity that transcends language. The caramel becomes its own kind of cathedral, the simmering, a symphony. And the cacophony of serving that food to everyone else – the wine stains that will never come out of the tablecloth – the gossip that can’t be taken back – it all echoes in my heart like thundering church bells. It might seem silly to say that cooking is a spiritual practice to me. But this ancient ritual of gathering to consume – that’s something eons of humans have done. Cooking has existed far longer than any modern religion – how could it not connect us to the great, elusive divine?
It’s likely to be a very long time before I’m making French onion soup for 20 people again. This past year, my parents sold their home, officially bringing the era of large extended-family Christmases to a natural close. Most of the cousins are grown now, many starting their own families in new cities and states. The parents are aging and this great inconvenience of large family gatherings that once carried such joy, now creates increasing stress and exhaustion. The home’s new owners will no doubt imbue it with all their own “Happy Birthdays” and arguments and aromas of fresh-baked cookies. But I do hope that when they gather together to share a meal, that they feel just a bit of connection to the ghosts of prime-ribs and bombastic-poker-games past.
So when I say that “I love to cook,” I don’t just mean that I love the final product – I mean I love waking up next to someone and making some toast and a bittersweet cup of coffee that just brings out the notes of good conversation. I mean I love that when I can’t speak the same language as someone else, they’ll know that I’m grateful by the way I scarf down the mole that’s been simmering all day. I mean that I love how when illness and grief inevitably come, a well-placed soup can say more than words ever could. And when my eyes well up with the very literal tears that go into French onion soup, they’re the mark of a love and a kind of connection that I can’t express any other way.
Carpe Noctum 