Stone Soup is an old folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the story is also known as Ax soup, button Soup, Nail Soup, and Wood Soup. Stone Soup is a popular food in the Fairytale World, where they thrown the rock away and eat the soup.
Plot[]
Some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. Then the travelers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with a few carrots to help them out, so that gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, the stone (being inedible) is removed from the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all. Although the travelers have thus tricked the villagers into sharing their food with them, they have successfully transformed it into a tasty and nutritious meal which they share with the donors.
In Northern European and Scandinavian countries, the story is most commonly known as "Nail Soup", and the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he will make a tasty nail soup for the both of them if she would just add a few ingredients for the garnish.
Books[]
Ever After High (I)[]
Raven took her tray to the last table in the Castleteria, her back to one of the trees that grew from the floor to the skylights six stories up. A leaf drifted down, plopping onto the surface of Raven’s soup. She stuck her spoon into the bowl to flick the leaf out, but her spoon clinked against something unexpectedly hard amid the stewed carrots and potatoes.
“Heads up. It’s stone soup again,” said Raven as Maddie and Cedar Wood set their trays down beside hers.
Cedar groaned and picked up her spoon with her bright blue fingers. While the rest of her was the fiery brown of the cedar wood she’d been carved from, her fingers were covered in blue paint up to her knuckles. You could tell a lot about Cedar’s current art projects by the color of her fingers. She didn’t mind getting messy. She just sanded the paint off.
Raven fished the stone out of her soup and dumped it on her napkin. Cedar did the same.
Raven heard a crunch.
“Maddie!” said Raven. “You’re not supposed to eat the stone.”
“Why not?” said Maddie. “It’s delightfully crunchy.”
“How do you even do that?” Raven asked. “I mean, it’s a rock.”
Maddie shrugged. “Sometimes things aren’t impossible the first time I try, because I don’t know they’re impossible yet. I probably couldn’t do it again, though.” The Storybook of Legend
Successors[]
Old Woman: Hagatha