Cooks who use a thin tomato juice for their soup generally use flour to give more body to the old favorite.

Some Amish cooks can a pulpy tomato juice, so laden with vegetables that their tomato soup requires no additional thickening.

“We ate lots of bean soup; we grew our own ‘Lazy Wife Beans.’ They would be planted at the edge of the cornfield so they’d grow up the stalks and get plenty of sun. That way you didn’t have to cut your own poles! But now you can’t do that because they spray the corn. “Bean soup was often our Saturday noon meal—with schnitz pie! It was an easy meal. The beans could cook while you cleaned. The pie, of course, had been made the day before.”

Either rivvels, noodles, crackers, or a white sauce have usually been mixed into the soups served at the kitchen tables of Amish households. There is a strong preference for starch in the food tradition of these people. Rivvels are used in different ways. In one home the custom was this: “My mother made them in broth or water, then fished them out when they were cooked through and we’d put them into whatever soup we were eating, to make it go further.” In another home, “We usually made just Rivvel Soup—rivvels in milk with melted butter—rather than putting rivvels in other things.”

Potato Soup still tops the list as the most frequently eaten soup in Amish homes. Some eat it with rivvels; other flavor it with chopped celery and onions. And although what accompanies the soup varies, the basic ingredients are the same. “We grew our own potatoes, so we ate potato soup more than once a week. With it we would often have scrambled eggs, usually in sandwiches, because we grew our own chickens. It’s a combination we still eat,” said one mother in her early 40s. “When we were first married we’d often have for Saturday dinner, potato soup—and schnitz pie in the left hand. A bit of one and then a bit of the other!” smiled an older man. That, too, is a widespread tradition. A woman in her mid-fifties remembered, “We used to say you couldn’t have your piece of schnitz pie until you were on your second bowl of potato soup. My husband doesn’t agree with that! He says you eat your pie right away!”

Some Amish cooks make their own crackers, but those are used primarily as a base for stewed chicken and gravy. The crackers that turn up in those favorite Amish mainstays—Steamed (or Stewed) Crackers and Fried Crackers—are pre-packaged, boxed, and bought at the store. Hearty breakfasts and “snack meals” need variety. That fact, plus the cook’s frequent obligation to produce a quick, yet stick-to-the-ribs meal are the likely backgrounds of these old favorites. Perhaps the Depression years also had a part in contributing these dishes to the Amish diet. Sometimes steamed crackers are a full course; sometimes they are a side dish. Certain combinations have prevailed. “We had stewed crackers with eggs for breakfast.” “We had stewed crackers with pink salmon for company as a side dish. I also remember stewed crackers with chicken. That was a main hot dish at weddings during the Depression.”