Legend has it that today in 1529, two armies decided that instead of having a war, they would have some soup.
Historians pretty well agree that this story is a legend, but the dispute was very real.
16th Century Switzerland had areas that were largely Catholic, areas that were largely Protestant, and a kind of middle ground.
Neither side wanted the other’s influence to expand, especially into that middle ground, and when they couldn’t reach an agreement, they started marching armies toward each other.
They met near what is now the community of Kappel am Albis, and they were about to square off when a local official asked everyone to hold off a little longer while he tried to work out a deal.
All that marching made the two armies tired and hungry, and so while they waited to hear about the negotiations, they decided to have a meal break.
The Catholics had lots of milk from their area’s farms, and the Protestants had lots of bread and salt.
They tossed those very basic ingredients into a big soup pot in the middle of the field, and voila, they had milk soup, or Milchsuppe.
This impromptu hangout over warm soup helped cool tempers to the point that negotiators did reach a deal to head off the war.
Well, for a while. A couple years later not even soup could keep the armies from doing battle.
But even so, the legend of the meeting in the “milk soup pasture” has become an important part of how Switzerland sees itself, that they can resolve even the toughest issues by sitting down together and compromising.
There’s a monument on the spot where the armies supposedly sat down together for soup, and milk soup is even used in some meetings and ceremonies to showcase a compromise or reaching a difficult agreement.
These days, though, they usually don’t just have to use milk, bread and salt.
Some modern chefs add cheese and parsley, or maybe some nutmeg and cloves.
And if they disagree about the best recipe, I bet they just sort it out over soup.
Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is holding a centennial celebration through September.
Each month is a different “moon phase” of the preserve, including highlighting the “Tranquil Wilderness” this month.
In Switzerland, the soup quarrelling politicians share (BBC)
100 Years of the Craters of the Moon (Visit Idaho)
Let’s sit down over some virtual soup together on our Patreon page
