Actually, plain old chicken soup is best. It has fluids, salt, protein and maybe some black pepper. Everything you need to drown a cold. Add noodles or rice and it has starch, too. Nothing better. Some of the best I ever ate was made by Vietnamese village women with nothing more than chicken, salt, rice and water. They cooked it in cut-up gasoline cans (washed of course). Better than C-rats, I’ll tell you.

I don’t know why chicken soup fits the human palette so well, but I have yet to find a society which has chickens available in which it is not revered. It seems to go with our body chemistry perfectly. Except for a very few which are allergic or cannot stand chicken. My favorite chicken “soup” is coq au vin. I have an ancient dutch oven given me by grandma and I cook it in that old monster.