There are some dishes that are ubiquitous around the globe.
Portland chef Jenn Louis has spent several years exploring our relationship with chicken soup.
She has collected dozens of recipes from all around the globe and put them into The Chicken Soup Manifesto.
Her first memories are of eating traditional Jewish soup, she told Kathryn Ryan.
Healing homemade chicken soup Photo: supplied
"I grew up in a Jewish home and chicken soup is a big thing in the Jewish home. It was either a big pot of chicken soup with carrots and celery and onion, maybe some noodles, or it was matzah ball soup".
Every culture thinks their chicken soup is the chicken soup, Louis says, and she started turning her mind to this most ubiquitous of dishes when she was flying home once and started to feel a terrible cold coming on.
"I texted my sister who lived in Portland at the time, and I told her how bad I was feeling. And you know, I mustered up enough energy, got on the flight, got in a cab got home. And there was a big pot of chicken soup that she made waiting for me on my doorstep and it was still warm.
"And I went in and I ate probably three bowls really fast. And although I wasn't better, it really gave me some really lovely relief.
"From that time I started to really think about chicken soup, how cultures use chicken soup, or what they think of chicken soup and how it differs depending upon what ingredients are in different places."
Congee was one of the first soups she reserached.
"You see congee in a lot of Asian cultures, in Korea, it's called juk, in China it's congee. And you'll see it sometimes with fish on top, maybe some meat, maybe herbs, it really is kind of a peasant food.
"Sometimes it's made with water, sometimes chicken stock, which gives it a really rich flavor. But the thing with congee it's a dish that's very simple and very inexpensive."
A colleague of hers introduced her to the Sri Lankan version.
"What I like about the Sri Lankan congee is that it's made with coconut milk and some turmeric. And is just very, very nourishing, and it has all of these really warm spices.
"I made it in an in a pressure cooker, the first time I made it, and I don't often do that.
"I just wanted to see what it would be like ... and I opened the pressure cooker and I ladled it into some bowls, and a friend of mine and I sat on a rainy day eating the congee and I'm like, 'isn't this like the best thing you've ever had?'"
There was one theme that emerged from every culture when it came to chicken soup, she says.
"Everywhere that I researched said that the soup was healing, and it was also good for hangovers."
