The Vintage Soup Your Grandparents Probably Made

Few dishes deliver a more comforting feeling than a homemade bowl of chicken and dumplings. The meal consists of a foundational nourishing chicken broth. Inside, there's an ample serving of tender chicken, often accompanied with aromatic root vegetables such as carrots and celery. Arguably the best part tops it off: Delightful fluffy dumplings, usually made of flour, baking soda, and dairy. It's a winning formula that's appealed for generations and a vintage dish your grandparents probably made. While this Southern classic certainly delighted generations throughout the 20th century, its roots trace back even further. The dish emerged from European dough-and-broth creations dating back to the 17th century, making it among the earliest recipes brought by settlers to the New World.  

As with many modern classics, no one knows precisely when or how the modern version came about. Early renditions employed hens or roosters since today's meaty chicken was a rare protein source prior to the 20th century. Patient slow-cooking attained the rich broth and tender meat, with dumplings folded in for added satiation. Although such construction could allude to a resourceful dish amidst times of scarcity, chicken and dumplings historically appealed across social strata. The trusty combo enabled varying interpretations, and easy scalability for many diners. It's a winning formula that's both old school and thoroughly modern, making the dish unlikely to fade away anytime soon.

Sample a cherished chicken and dumpling family recipe and it's easy to imagine such a rendition carried through generations. Yet, just like how the precise assembly differs from one household to the next, even the meal's most foundational components evolved over time. Let's start by examining the dumpling component since its consumption predates the chicken.

One of the earliest published recipes dates back to 1836 in "The Virginia Housewife," written by Mary Randolph. Here, the dish comprises a beef-fat based pastry filled with meat and boiled to completion. Intriguingly, the same cookbook also includes a boiled sweet dumpling recipe constructed from a potato-and-flour dough filled with fruit. Over the next several decades, an increasing array of Southern dumpling preparations arose. In the 1839 cookbook "The Kentucky Housewife," there's one of the first recipes sans filling. It consists of small, round dough shapes boiled and enjoyed alongside meat stew.

Poultry is finally mentioned in Marion Cabell Tyree's 1879 "Housekeeping in Old Virginia," which consists of chicken meat paired with rapidly boiled thin pastry. Five years later appears the modern rendition (in "Cook Book and Useful Household Hints"), which explicitly mentions slow-cooked chicken paired with ball-shaped dumplings. From there on out, the merging of the two elements only kept evolving. So, while your grandparents probably made chicken and dumplings, your great-great-grandparents might have used fruit, beef, or pork instead.

By the 20th century, chicken and dumplings became a firmly American classic, spinning off into numerous regional forms. In Pennsylvania, there's bott boi, best described as a liquidy pot pie creation complemented with thick, square-shaped pieces of dough. Intriguingly, the broth can employ milk rather than stock, and some recipes feature saffron (which is grown in the region). Meanwhile, residents of eastern North Carolina call the dish chicken pastry, and employ lard in a ribbon-shaped dough to generate another satiating take on the classic.

Furthermore, the modern grocery supply chain heralded a wide breadth of renditions. The advent of affordable whole chickens let cooks roast rather than stew the chicken (since slow-cooking led to rubbery meat). Newfound convenience also brought easy assembly hacks: Think canned biscuits used for the dumplings, store-bought broth, and cheap rotisserie chicken for the meat component. Widened shopping options also inspired creative spins: Leeks and peas joined the carrots, dumplings turned gluten-free, and the chicken became vegan. Chicken and dumplings might make you reminisce about the old times as the meal keeps evolving into the future.