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Soup Is Medicine

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"I caught a bad cold one time when I was nine years old. The doctor whipped up a pot of garlic soup and brought it over himself."
— Tom Paris, Star Trek: Voyager

Soup has been around for centuries, and lots of people eat it. However, this trope is when it is associated with illness somehow. In addition to being wrapped up in a blanket with a thermometer in their mouth and tissue boxes surrounding them, a common sign for how to tell when a character is sick to a viewer is to have them be eating a bowl of soup. Soup is often offered to or left on hold for sick people.

This convention varies a little by culture; for example, in the United States, it's usually chicken soup (particularly with Jewish families, leading to the nickname "Jewish penicillin"), with vegetable soup a good substitute for vegetarians; in the United Kingdom, it's often chicken or tomato; and in Japanese works, it's rice porridge (okayu).note  The trope can also be justified by the soup having magical properties that can cure the sick character.

There is an element of Truth in Television to this. Soup is, after all, rather nutritious (obviously necessary when fighting an illness) and the fact that it's mostly liquid (with the solid parts made soft and easy to chew by being cooked in liquid) makes it easier to be consumed and less likely to be vomited afterwards (not to mention easier to clean up if vomiting does happen). In the case of a sore throat, the heat is soothing too. Since doctors often recommend that people consume lots of fluids while ill, a meal that is a fluid also helps follow those instructions. In addition to everything else, the Placebo Effect also applies here; most people agree that soup is good for you, and if you're of the right mind to believe it can make you better, your symptoms will definitely be relieved for a while. Needless to say, it's not a coincidence that sales of tinned soup tend to consistently rise around the depths of winter, when not only is it freezing outside, but your odds of catching a common cold is significantly higherWhy? (and the hot soup helps warm you up in the cold).

It's sometimes paired with Appetite Equals Health: a sick character won't be hungry at all and won't eat anything, but once they're getting better, they'll try eating soup in small amounts and gradually they'll get better.

See also Sick Episode and Hot Drink Cure. If the characters' "illness" is emotional, then the soup falls under the category of Comfort Food. Of course, the best soup for what ails you is probably Grandma's Recipe. Another related trope is Soup of Poverty.

Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

  • Yukari teaches Daikichi how to make okayu for his sick surrogate child Rin in Bunny Drop. Yukari is raising her own son Kouki on her own so she knows how to make it well.
  • In Delicious in Dungeon, wizard Marcille runs out of mana and is severely weakened by it. The solution? Soup made of undine of course! This one is justified: undine are magical spirits, so she's essentially drinking pure mana.
  • In Fruits Basket, when Tohru gets sick from stressing herself out after failing one of her exams, Kyo cooks okayu for her as a sign that he's come to care for her quite a lot. Many non-Japanese fans mistook the okayu he makes for soup, to the point that "SOUP!" became a meme related to the Kyo/Tohru pairing and creator Natsuki Takaya wondered why people were calling okayu "soup".
  • In episode 25 of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Yuko makes okayu for Megumi while she has a cold, which Blue serves to her.
  • In Monster Musume, when Kimihito gets a cold, all the girls take turns trying to think of ways to cure him. Miia's idea is to make him white rice porridge, but as she's a Lethal Chef the results are terrifying. Fortunately, Suu eats it rather than delivering it to him. He thanks her.
  • In an episode of Sailor Moon, Minako makes okayu for the other Sailor Soldiers, who have fallen ill (the '90s dub adapted it into a nondescript soup). The problem is that she's a terrible cook and only makes things worse.
  • In Skip Beat!, Kyoko makes Ren (who is recovering from a bad cold) vegetable soup for breakfast in case his throat is still too sore to eat anything solid.
  • Suzuka: In Episode 3, Honoka makes bonito broth for a sick Yamato. Unfortunately, Yasunobu and Yaku eat all of it before he can have any.
  • In one chapter of the Tenchi Muyo! manga, Ryoko tries to make a sick Tenchi some egg sake. Unfortunately, her Lethal Chef tendency causes her to forget to take the eggs out of the shells before cooking, resulting in sake-flavored hard-boiled eggs rather than a soup-like dish.
  • Whispered Words: Sumika has soup spooned into her mouth by Ushio while she has a cold.
  • Wolf Children: When Hana is suffering from morning sickness during her first pregnancy, the wolf-man makes her a bowl of udon with a pheasant he caught.

    Asian Animation 
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Flying Island: The Sky Adventure episode 9, a flashback has Hope, the director of the weather factory, offering a bowl of soup to a factory worker who has come down with a cold.

    Comic Books 
  • In Asterix and the Griffin, Getafix's attempt to remake the magic potion results in a nourishing soup that cures the cold he had caught earlier in the book.
  • In one Daddy's Home strip, Peter makes soup for his wife Peg when she gets sick.
  • In the Darkwing Duck comic story "Bad Medicine", Gosalyn makes chicken noodle soup for Darkwing when he comes down with the flu.
  • Donald Duck: In "Donald Duck and Isabella", Donald and his nephews are given soup by the people living on the sea bed (It Makes Sense in Context) to perk them up after being dragged underwater.
  • In one story of the Jackpot comic "Marathon Mutt", the hero Henry Bono is caught by his rivals and shipped to an army base at the North Pole. When found, he's frozen solid, so the army men wrap him in an Illness Blanket and give him a Foot Bath Treatment and some soup.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • In "Devil With a Blue Dress On", She-Devil offers gruel to a sick Taz, then tries to catch Bugs in order to make rabbit soup for her patient.
    • In another Looney Tunes comic story, Ralph Phillips daydreams that he is an astronaut delivering chicken soup to The Man in the Moon with the latter has a cold.
    • In the comic story "Sneezy Does It", Slyvester tries (and fails) to make Tweety Bird soup to cure his cold.
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • In "Amoeba? I Don't Even Know Ya!", Professor Utonium gives the girls soup when they're sick with flu.
    • In the comic story "Suddenly, Everything Went Fuzzy!", Blossom makes chicken soup for Fuzzy Lumpkins when he gets sick with a cold.
  • Robin: When Stephanie gets a cold Tim decides to fix homemade chicken soup for her and bring it over even though he doesn't have a car anymore. With Dana's help, he's able to fix the soup and then he has to take it by subway to get to Stephanie's house where she is appreciative of the food. It helps her nose clear up right away and she recovers from her illness the next day.
  • Near the end of the The Simpsons comic "One Flu Over Springfield," a sick Krusty is shown giving Mr. Teeny a bowl of chicken soup with a rubber chicken in it.
  • The Smurfs:
    • In "Doctor Smurf", Papa Smurf tells Sickly Smurf to drink some vegetable soup and rest. Played With in that Sickly isn't actually sick, he just thinks he is.
    • In the comic story "Little Peter's Christmas", the titular Peter is introduced giving his sick mother a bowl of soup.
    • In "The Clockwork Smurf", the Smurfs ask Clockwork Smurf to give a sick Smurf a bowl of sarsaparilla soup. Unbeknownst to them, the Clockwork with them is Gargamel's evil creation, and the soup is actually a potion that turns them into hideous monsters.
  • In one Decap Attack strip from the Sonic the Comic, Stein's nanny feeds Head a disgusting green broth to help him get over his drinking problem.
  • In the Spongebob Squarepants comic story "Sick Day", Sandy makes a super-spicy soup for Spongebob when he's sick in bed.
  • In one issue of Totally Awesome Hulk, a de-Hulked Bruce Banner has the flu (and is delighted, because getting sick is a sign that the Hulk is gone). Amadeus Cho is more panicky about it and tries to make his mother's soup recipe and tea simultaneously while muttering about "clear liquids". Then Rick Jones shows up with a six-pack of beer: "Clear liquids, right?"
  • In one Uncle Wiggly comic story, Wiggly takes some carrot soup to his sick friend Mr. Twistytail.

    Comic Strips 
  • In a The Far Side comic, a mother hen is feeding chicken soup to her chick who is bedridden with a cold. She tells the chick to just drink it because it's good for colds and it's nobody they know.
  • FoxTrot:
    • In one strip, Andy makes turkey noodle soup for Peter when he is too sick to join his family for Thanksgiving.
    • In another strip, Andy makes a sick Roger lie on the couch under a blanket, and gives him soup and soda crackers.
  • In one Off the Mark comic, a fortune teller tells a chicken that she sees that he is destined to be a success in the field of healthcare. The next panel shows that the chicken has been turned into soup, and is being eaten by a man with a cold.
  • In one Peanuts strip, Marcie makes a sick Snoopy (in his Flying Ace persona) a bowl of dog food soup.
  • In one Rose is Rose strip, Rose's mother comes over with homemade soup when Rose is sick.
  • In this◊ unnamed comic, a chicken doctor writes their sick patient a prescription for "people" soup.
  • In this unnamed comic, a woman serves her sick husband soup, and has to assure him that she didn't use his clean socks to strain the soup.
  • This unnamed comic depicts a sick Death being served soup by his wife.

    Fan Works 

    Film — Animation 
  • At the end of Frozen Fever, Anna feeds soup to the sick Elsa in a sweet sisterly bonding scene.
  • The Japanese porridge variation appears in Kiki's Delivery Service: Osono serves Kiki okayu (changed to oatmeal with honey in the English dub) when she's sick.
  • In the The Secret of NIMH, Mrs Brisby's sick son Timmy is given medicine, which is served in a broth.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Madeline: After Madeline almost drowns in the Seine, she starts sneezing, and Miss Clavel takes her home, puts her to bed, and serves her soup and tea. The movie doesn't say if she's caught a cold or just gotten chilled, but either way, Miss Clavel wants to nip it in the bud.
    Miss Clavel: "Tea, soup and covers. I want you to stay under the covers, eat your soup and drink your tea."
  • In Nanny McPhee, the Brown children all come down with the measles, after faking it to be able to stay in bed, and having the feigned illness become real. Nanny McPhee suggest the idea of a broth for the children to Cook, due to Cook's experience in the armed forces, to which Cook excitedly suggests "best thin potato gruel with peelings in". And a turkey neck. The children don't like it, with Lily remarking that their guardians are starving them, and wondering how long it would take for them all to die.

    Literature 
  • Amelia Bedelia: In one of the books set in the past when Amelia Bedelia was a kid, entitled "Amelia Bedelia Goes Wild", young Amelia has the flu and her mother serves her soup. However, Amelia is not hungry.
  • In the book Bear Feels Sick, Gopher makes broth for Bear when the latter is sick.
  • Blue's Sniffly Day, which is a book based on Blue's Clues, has Blue get a cold and be served vegetable soup. It didn't cure Blue's cold the way it did Steve's sniffles, though.
  • The Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise uses this metaphorically. It's a compilation of stories meant to emotionally soothe the reader, similar to how chicken soup does when you're sick.
  • A variant in A Christmas Carol: After a day of Working Through the Cold, Scrooge is eating warm gruel by the fire when Marley's Ghost appears. Gruel was often used as a home remedy for colds in 19th century England, much like porridge is in Japan.
  • Near the beginning of Ella Enchanted, Ella and her mother both get sick. Their fairy cook, Mandy, makes them a curing soup, containing hairs from a unicorn's tail. The hairs don't have to be consumed, but they do need to be left in the soup, or else it has no curing power. Ella leaves the hairs in hers, and fully recovers by the next day, but her mother is disgusted by the hairs and picks them out of the soup before eating it. Result? She dies.
  • The 19th century gruel variant is found in Little Women: when the March family brings breakfast to the poor Hummel family on Christmas morning, Mrs. Hummel is sick, so Marmee gives her gruel and tea.
  • Little Raccoon Catches A Cold: Little Raccoon at the end catches a cold by falling into the river and is served hot soup by his brother.
  • In Madeline's Christmas, when Miss Clavel and all the little girls except Madeline have colds and Madeline has to take care of them, one illustration shows her cooking a big pot of soup in the kitchen.
  • In the Morris The Moose book "Morris Has a Cold", Morris the moose has a cold and Boris the bear gives him a checkup and believes his stomach is upset so he feeds him some soup to heal it. Morris doesn't know what soup is, so when he's served it, he tries to lap it up like a dog and when Boris says "Use the spoon", he licks the spoon and when Boris says "No, put the spoon in your mouth", Morris puts the whole spoon in his mouth so Boris spoon-feeds him.
  • In one of the Orphan Train Adventures stories, Megan brings Ada Haskill chicken soup when the latter is ill (not that Ada appreciates it).
  • In The Robots of Dawn, Baley is given chicken soup by a woman and notes how women are the same as his mother used to give him the same dish when he was sick.
  • Roys Bedoys: In "Get Well Soon, Roys Bedoys!", Roys is sick with what appears to be a cold or the flu, so Mrs. Bedoys gives him chicken soup.
  • Rugrats:
    • Tommy Catches a Cold has Tommy Pickles catch a cold and his mother Didi serves him a bottle of chicken soup that still has the chicken's feet in it, a recipe from Grandma Minka.
    • A book entitled Candy Soup has Kimi get sick and the babies try to make their Halloween candy into candy soup because they think that candy and soup have healing properties and therefore it would cure Kimi. note 
  • Sesame Street:
    • The Day Snuffy Had the Sniffles has Oscar the Grouch give some sardine and sour kraut soup to Big Bird to give to Snuffy, who's sick with something that's referred to exclusively as "The Sniffles". He claims that it's a family recipe that cures the sniffles, but it's best eaten while cold (and tastes its worst). Everyone else hates it.
    • Sort of inverted in the Sesame Street book It's No Fun to be Sick: Chicken soup is usually Herry's favourite food but when he's served it while sick, it tastes bad to him.
    • In yet another Sesame Street book, Nobody Cares About Me (which has the same plot as It's No Fun to be Sick, just with different characters), Bert makes soup for a sick Ernie at the beginning and later makes some for Big Bird when he gets sick too.
  • In the picture book Sick Day by David McPhail, an unnamed boy has an unnamed ailment and A Dog Named "Dog" tries to give him a bone to make him better but he eats his mom's chicken soup instead. He's fine in two days.
  • In the children's book Sometimes You Barf, a girl cites the flu bug as a reason to, well, barf (she cites that animals barf for different reasons, but flu is the only example she mentions of a human barfing), and then describes how the flu works. She mentions eating soup on the day before you get totally better.
  • In Stuart Little, after Stuart is accidentally shut in the refrigerator for half an hour, Mrs. Little serves him hot broth. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent him from catching bronchitis from the ordeal.
  • In the 1970 picture book Tell Me a Mitzi, the second chapter, "Mitzi Sneezes," is about a day when Mitzi and her whole family gets sick. They eat soup both for lunch and for dinner that day. Since the family is Ambiguously Jewish, it makes sense that chicken soup should be a go-to remedy for them.
  • In The Ten PM Question, Frankie is unwell (possibly either the flu, depression or sleep deprivation or even a combination) at one point and his mother Francie serves him chicken soup, which apparently, he always eats when sick.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Altered Carbon. Poe offers Miss Dig a bowl of chicken soup while she is recovering from having an Override Command used on her. As they are both avatars of Artificial Intelligences, she points out that it's not very practical, but Poe replies that such gestures are important in themselves.
  • The Big Bang Theory:
    • In "The Pancake Batter Anomaly", Sheldon gets sick and demands to have some soup, bothering his roommate Leonard (who runs off, because dealing with a sick Sheldon is too much to take) and his across-the-hall neighbour Penny (who is at work; she's a waitress). He specifically requests "this split pea with little frankfurter slices and these homemade croutons" that his mother used to make him.
    • In "The Large Hadron Collision", both Penny and Sheldon get sick. Penny prepares two bowls of soup for them, and Sheldon is being annoying about it as always.
      Penny: Here’s your soup.
      Sheldon: Chicken?
      Penny: Yes.
      Sheldon: With the little stars?
      Penny: Yes.
      Sheldon: Heated to 180 degrees?
      Penny: Why don’t I pour it in your lap, and you can tell me.
      Sheldon: You don’t have to be mean. I’m sick.
      Penny: Yeah, well, I’m sick, too.
  • One sketch of A Bit of Fry and Laurie has two gentlemen bringing soup to their sick love interest to cure her Victorian Novel Disease. This spikes an argument about whether soup or broth has curing effects.
  • The Brady Bunch: In the episode "Coming-Out Party," when Cindy comes down with tonsillitis, Marcia and Jan feed her an excess of soup to try to cure her without the need for surgery, so the family's planned boat trip won't need to be cancelled. It doesn't work.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
    • "AC/DC": Jake gets hurt and is visibly in pain but insists he can work. Charles Boyle, obsessed with food, brings him 'healing soup'.
      Charles: I was out getting him some healing broth. I was torn between chicken or beef, but then it hit me. Goat!
    • "Karen Peralta": Karen says Jake's father used to be selfish, but claims he's nicer now. He even brought her some weird Canadian soup when she was ill.
      Karen: Last month when I had bronchitis, he flew in on his day off just to bring me soup. It was this weird Canadian soup — I think it was just all cheese. But it was really nice.
  • The 1995 TV remake of Bye Bye Birdie adds a new song for Mae Peterson, "A Mother Doesn't Matter Anymore," and among its guilt-tripping lyrics are the lines "That time you caught the croup, who made you chicken soup?"
  • In the Clarissa Explains It All episode "The Flu", Clarissa sends Ferguson to the grocery store to get the ingredients to make chicken soup for their sick parents. But Ferguson only buys the chicken, then spends the rest of the money on chocolate. Clarissa is forced to make soup that's just chicken boiled in water. In the end, when Clarissa and Ferguson are sick and their parents are well, their mother serves them the soup made the right way.
  • CSI: NY: Shows up in two episodes.
    • "City of the Dolls": The victim in the B-case is a waitress who was supposed to have filled in for a co-worker, but didn't show up and the two fought about it. Feeling guilty because the victim had said she was too sick to go in, the other woman took her some chicken soup from the restaurant.
    • "The Party's Over": Danny leaves a crime scene claiming to be sick when a large portion of NYPD Officers come down with the "Blue Flu" over a salary freeze. Later, Stella visits him at home and takes him some chicken soup. After letting her in, he fesses up that he's not really ill.
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show:
    • In "The Meershatz Pipe", Laura gives Rob chicken-rice soup while he's sick.
    • In "The Death Of The Party", Sally and Buddy try to give their sick co-worker soup to help him feel better, and get into an argument about whether they should reheat it or not.
  • Played with in the Emergency! episode "The Hard Hours". Dr. Early tells Roy and Johnny to invite him to the station the next time Captain Stanley makes his clam chowder. This is before he's told he has to undergo heart bypass surgery. At the end of the episode, the firemen come to visit him as he's recovering, and to his delight, they bring along a thermos of Stanley's clam chowder, which he immediately declares as much preferred to the hospital food.
  • In Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray complains of having caught something from a man at the airport who sneezed on him. Debra thinks he's faking but his mother Marie makes him some chicken soup, causing Ray's friends to start Playing Sick in order to get chicken soup.
  • Forever: In "New York Kids" Abe boasts that his Jungle Thai Curry Soup is guaranteed to cure colds and bullet wounds.
  • In the Friends episode where Monica has a cold, Phoebe makes her chicken noodle soup. Except Phoebe's vegetarian, so it's just noodle soup. And there's no stock, so it's just noodle water.
  • On Good Eats, Alton discusses how, in the days before modern medicine, this trope really was Truth in Television, and bone broth (specifically) was thought to have curative powers for various ailments. He also laments how many people have lost the traditional art of soup-making, getting their soup from cans, envelopes, or worse, bouillion cubes (which are basically just artificially-flavored salt licks.) His sister, Marsha note , comes down with the flu and wheedles Alton into making soup for her. He does, and he uses a pressure-cooker to get the job done faster, so Marsha will be out of his house faster.
  • In the Gullah Gullah Island episode "Natalie's Sick", Juana makes vegetable soup for a sick Natalie.
  • In an episode of Hannibal, Supreme Chef Hannibal visits Will in hospital with a very fancy soup full of healthful ingredients, which Will lampshades with "You brought me chicken soup?" As a Genius Bonus, the soup is part of Hannibal's Gaslighting ploy: some of the ingredients would actually aggravate Will's brain condition.
  • How I Met Your Mother, "How Lily Stole Christmas": Barney gets sick, though he tries to deny it for almost the entire episode and behaves like a spoilt child. At one point, Robin must feed him soup and generally treat him like an annoying child.
    Robin: Come on, you need eat something.
    Barney: Too weak... to hold... bowl.
    Robin: Fine, I'll feed you.
    Barney: Ouchie in my mouth! I don't want it. I want ice cream.
    Robin: No, you're not having ice cream for dinner just 'cause you're sick.
    Barney: But my throat hurts.
    Robin: No!
  • Jejak Suara Adzan: When Dimas is sick, it's revealed that the only thing he could/would eat in that condition is his mother's soup.
  • In an episode of New Tricks, Jack falls sick while investigating the murder of several dogs and a witness offers him some soup. The witness is the killer and is using the dogs' insides to make soup, which can make someone sick if they eat too much of it.
  • In an episode of Nurse Jackie, a dying man rejects medicine in favour of his mother's soup.
  • Parks and Recreation: When Leslie is sick with the flu, Ben brings her soup made from a family recipe along with waffles from JJ's Diner. Leslie is only interested in the waffles.
  • In The Riddlers episode "In the Soup", Mossop and Mr. Grimly make soup for a sick Majorie - or try to, at least. Tiddler buys some soup and gives it to Majorie instead.
  • Sex Education: Jakob brings Jean some soup when she's sick while he's fixing her bathroom. She finds him irresistible and later tells him the soup was a nice touch.
    Jakob: It's for you. It's soup. For a sick person.
    Jean: Oh, no! Oh, you shouldn't have done that. I'm feeling so much better today. Just a scratchy throat.
    Jakob: Still, uh... eat the soup. It's good for you.
  • Star Trek: Apparently this trope still applies in the twenty-fourth century.
    • Star Trek: The Original Series:
      • In the episode "Amok Time" Nurse Chapel brings Vulcan "Plomeek Soup" to the ailing Mr. Spock. Twice, as he throws the first batch at her, but admits that the second is "very good."
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
      • In the episode "The Icarus Factor", Doctor Pulaski says that the patient with flu can be cured with a hypospray that will be obtained on another planet and some P.C.S., which stands for Pulaski's Chicken Soup.
      • In "The Inner Light", Picard's fake alternate wife believes him to be sick due to him not remembering her and feeds him soup.
    • Star Trek: Voyager:
      • Tom Paris mentions that he once had a cold when he was nine and his doctor served him garlic soup.
      • In one episode, Harry Kim dreams about being sick with some sort of pox as a child and his mother suggesting she make soup for him. He mentions that as a child, his mother really did care for him when he got the pox, but it's unknown whether the soup part actually happened.
    • Zigzagged for the episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Waltz". Dukat gives Sisko soup and at first he claims that Sisko is just injured, then he claims that he'd thrown up in his sleep, then it turns out that both times, he was just lying.

    Magazines 
  • In a National Geographic: Kids magazine, there's a section explaining why chicken soup is associated with colds.

    Music 
  • "A Cold in My Nose", which is a song about someone trying to understand a person with a cold, has the lyric "Maybe my mama will make noodle soup".
  • A song "A Cold in My Nose" (the same name, different song), has the lyric "I got a cold in my nose, I'll drink a tonne of chicken soup, I suppose."
  • This song has characters suggesting remedies for a character's cold and one of them suggests alphabet soup.
  • In this song, the singer wants chicken soup and a warm bed.
    "I need some chicken noodle soup and a nice warm bed."

    Newspaper Comics 
  • In one Red and Rover strip, Red is given chicken noodle soup and crackers when he is home sick.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Fraggle Rock:
    • In "The Great Radish Caper", Marjorie the Trash Heap freezes, and Mokey thaws her by tricking the Gorgs into throwing out a freshly made pot of hot soup.
    • The episode "The Great Radish Caper" reveals that Ma Gorg makes hot garlic soup for Junior whenever she thinks he's sick—or sick in the head.
    • In the episode "The New Trash Heap In Town", Mokey makes rutabaga soup for Gobo, who has a broken leg.
    • In "The Secret Society Of Poohbahs", Boober gives Mokey okra soup when the latter pretends to have galloping tongue fever.
  • In one episode of Sesame Street, Snuffy gets a cold and David recommends that Big Bird gives him soup. He then has to fill a washtub full of the stuff, since a regular serving is too small for Snuffy. Later, Big Bird catches the cold, so David makes a regular portion for him, and finally David himself comes down with the cold and makes himself some soup.
  • In the Today's Special episode "Soup," Jodie is sick and can't come to work, but it happens that "today's special" at the department store is soup, so Jeff has Sam take her a can of soup from the display to help her feel better.

    Video Games 
  • In Crusader Kings 2, you can build hospitals. One of the upgrades is the soup kitchen, which gives you points in disease resistance.
  • One of the things needed to heal the sick guy from Grow Nano vol.3 is soup.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Elixir Soup, which is a soup made by Link's grandma in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, is the best healing item in the game, as it not only refills Link's health and magic and has two servings, it also grants double attack power until Link is damaged.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, abominable snowman Yeto's wife Yeta is sick with what looks like a cold. Yeto, intent on making soup for her, gathers items and ends up with a powerful healing potion, which you're free to sample as much of as you please when you're in Snowpeak Ruins. When you run into her near the end, Yeta's already feeling better from having had some.
  • Moshi Monsters: In the "Missing on a Star" mission, Judder catches the flu. When you feed him soup with chicken, peas, and noodles, it cures him. Non-chicken soup, however, does not seem to be associated with illness.
  • Neopets:
    • One April Fools' Day plot was having everyone's pet catch a disease called The Scourges. Several temporary "cures" were listed, one being Blazing Hot Soup, and Neggdrop Soup is described as being "good for when you're not well".
    • Usually, however, this trope is averted due to the Soup Kitchen's rations, which are given to poor, but for the most part healthy, Neopets.
    • Feel Better Soup, a Battledome item that was given out at the Advent Calendar in December 2022, heals your pet for 50% of their HP.
      Description: Nothing like some warm soup in your belly to get you feeling better!
  • In a little Internet game based on Sesame Street to do with counting chickens, Elmo sings a song. One lyric is "When Elmo's sick he gobbles down some delicious chicken soup."
  • The Freetime expansion of The Sims 2 gives new abilities to the various aspirations. Family Aspiration Sims gain the ability to make "Grandma's Comfort Soup", which cures all illnesses.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Melody, when Becca has the flu, her parents come over and make her soup.

    Webcomics 
  • Lemonhead and Lollipup:
    • In this strip, Lemonhead makes chicken soup for a sick Lollipup.
    • In this strip, a sick Lemonhead has a box of tissues and a bowl of soup on the table next to the sofa she's lying on.
  • My Milk Toof: In the "Sick Lardee" story, ickle offers Lardee some soup in an attempt to help him feel better. Lardee refuses it at first but changes his mind after ickle reads him a story where he's a brave hero and ickle is a wizard.
  • In this Tubby and Tummy comic, Tubby gives Tummy a bowl of soup when the latter is sick in bed.
  • In this Wawawiwa Comics strip, Earth decides to make some soup for Sun upon seeing their high temperature, unaware that this is Sun's normal temperature.
  • The Class Menagerie: Near the end of the "Impatient In-Patient" story, Kevin tries to be nice and gets some soup for Mike, who's been laid up with a cold. Unfortunately, the soup is chicken noodle, and Mike is a kangaroo, resulting in the meat giving him food poisoning and sending him back to the doctor for the third time since he got sick, since this was just the latest attempt at "help" that ended up injuring him instead.
  • Penny Arcade: A Failure To Plan - Tycho catches something from Gabe that makes him too sick to attend the 2006 E3, and demands soup. Instead, Gabe for some reason decided to buy him a pet tropical fish.
    Tycho: Fish, I guess I should tell you now. We don't own an aquarium.

    Web Original 
  • In When Abuela Knows You're Sick from the Abuela series, Abuela offers chicken soup to her sick grandchild to get rid of germs.
  • In a parenting blog called Crappy Pictures, this post lampshades the writer's belief that if she is nice enough to her two sons and feeds them enough soup when they get sick, they will recover faster.
  • Exaggerated into a superpower in Epithet Erased. Giovanni’s power over soup allows him to summon cups of soup nutritious enough to work like healing potions.
  • JaidenAnimations: In her video about illness and injuries, Jaiden talks about how people feel sorry for sick people but shun them because they don't want to catch the germs. She illustrates this by having an animation of herself giving a sick man soup with a stick over a line he's not allowed to cross.
  • The SCP Foundation:
    • One SCP is a bowl that fills with soup whenever someone nearby is sick or hurt. The soup has varying levels of helpfulness and its quality is linked to the eater's relationship with their parents.
    • Another SCP is a canned chicken soup product that can cure illnesses but was discontinued because it has horrible side effects if the instructions are not followed precisely. Consuming it after it has been cooled and reheated results in you partially transforming into a chicken.
  • This article on how to tell if your kid is Playing Sick.
    So before you grab the thermometer, heat up the chicken soup, and call your boss, you might want to consider the possibility that something besides germs is invading your home.
  • The Sick Episode page on This Very Wiki plays on this trope.
    The Sick Episode may also entail characters having to work through their illness when they'd really rather be at home in bed with bowls of chicken soup.
    Yikes, you don't look so good. Just get back to the unabridged version and I'll bring you up some soup.
  • This article for recipes for chicken soup recipes describes the recipes as good for "Whether you're combating a cold or seeking a warm feel-good meal".

    Western Animation 
  • In the Adventure Time episode "Simon and Marcy", the part-way-insane Simon Petrikov becomes obsessed with getting soup for a sick Marceline. In an earlier draft, it was originally medicine, but it was censored to be soup instead.
  • Aladdin: The Series:
    • In "Egg-stra Protection", Genie gives both Aladdin and Jasmine chicken soup when they break their ribs.
    • At the end of "Smolder and Wiser", Abis Mal is duped into thinking he has the flu, and his last scene shows him wrapped in an Illness Blanket and giving himself a Foot Bath Treatment while Haroud brings him soup.
  • In the Alien TV episode "Sick", one alien makes soup for its friends (using a rubber chicken, an egg and a box of tissues) when they get sick.
  • Arthur:
    • In the episode "April 9th," Arthur is afraid to let his dad leave the house after the latter briefly gets trapped in the school's fire. So he fakes a sore throat because he knows that whenever he has a sore throat, his dad makes chicken soup, and he wants his dad to stay home. David sees through the lie and reassures him that nothing bad will happen to him if he leaves.
    • In the episode "The Great McGrady", when Mrs McGrady (the lunch lady) is diagnosed with cancer, Arthur and D.W. offer her chicken soup.
    • Arthur gets chicken soup while afflicted with chicken pox in "Arthur's Chicken Pox".
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode, "Heart of Ice", Batman gets a cold after his first encounter with Mr. Freeze. Unable to convince him to stay at home and get some rest, Alfred instead gives Batman a thermos filled with chicken soup, referring to it as "the only way to fight a cold." It winds up becoming a Chekhov's Gun, but not in the way it was originally intended.
  • Blue Eye Samurai. Mizu's apprentice Ringo is a former soba chef, so naturally he uses this trope while his master is recovering from fighting the Four Fangs. However given the time period he is making medicine rather than soup; he warns against eating too much of a particular mushroom because it's toxic, which serves as a Chekhov's Gun when he later poisons a Giant Mook by cooking a meal for him.
  • The Berenstain Bears: In the 2003 episode "Trouble at School", when Sister Bear catches Brother's disease, which is ambiguously flu or a cold, Mama Bear goes to make chicken soup.
  • In the Blue's Clues episode "Steve has the Sniffles" vegetable soup is what Steve needs to feel better, according to the clues.
  • In The Brothers Flub episode "Sloppy Sentiments", Guapo and Fraz give Miss Boomdeyay a pot of chicken noodle soup when she gets sick.
  • In Code Name Kids Next Door, Numbuh Two's mother uses chicken soup to defeat Common Cold after the O.J. launcher has no effect on his machine.
    • In the episode "SNOWING", Lizzie makes a chicken banana fritter soup with extra curly fries, cottage cheese, and mud in an attempt to make Nigel feel better from the flu. Needless to say, it very much does not make Nigel feel any better.
  • In Crawford's Corner, the two characters Crawford the cat and Harriet the bunny always bring each other warm soup when one of them has a cold.
  • Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood:
    • In the episodes "Daniel Gets a Cold" and "Mom Tiger is Sick", they are given vegetable soup, along with orange juice to help them recover faster. "Someone may help you take care of you, they might tuck you in or make you soup" is a line in the song of the day.
    • Zigzagged in the episode "Daniel's Neighbours Help". Lady Elaine serves chicken soup to a sick Mrs Tiger and Daniel, and even calls it Get-Well-in-a-Jiffy Chicken Soup, but Mr Tiger eats it too, despite being in perfect health.
  • In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Scroogerello", Scrooge comes down with a fever. Webby tries to give him some soup, only to trip and spill it all over him.
  • In Generation O!, Molly gets served soup when she gets a sore throat.
  • The Hair Bear Bunch: Square Bear is convalescing from a back injury (he's faking it) in zookeeper Peevly's bed. Bubi Bear recommends some "nice nourishing broth" for him.
    Square: No! Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce!
  • Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: The episode "Achoo" has Harry catch a cold and get served chicken soup. Later, when the dinosaurs (except Steggy) get diseases they get served soup too. The dinos, it seems, have Hyperactive Metabolisms and are instantly cured upon eating the soup. Harry, however, is not so lucky.
  • In the Katie and Orbie episode "Sore Throat", Katie's parents make her chicken soup and a hot lemony drink.
  • Kim Possible: In the half-episode "Sick Day", Kim asks her mom for soup while she gets some bed rest to recover from a cold. Jim and Tim also ask for soup in their first appearance in the episode, and Ron also eats soup after getting sick.
  • In the Let's Go Luna! episode "Jolly Special Friend", Papa Chockers is immediately cured of his illness when Leo feeds him chicken pad thai.
  • In the Little Bear episode "A Flu," Mother Bear serves broth to the sick Little Bear. He doesn't get to eat it, though, because Cat laps it up without asking when he comes to visit.
  • In an episode of Little Einsteins, one of Rocket's relations (also a spaceship) is sick/broken and is being delivered Rocket Soup.
  • The Little Princess episode "I Don't Want a Cold" has the Princess catch a cold. On the second day of having a cold, she is hungry and wants a picnic. She gets broth instead, which she doesn't like.
  • Parodied in The Loud House episode "One Flu Over the Loud House". The family gets flu, one by one, and the healthy siblings spray chicken soup at them, but it's to keep them out of the way rather than to help them. Partly averted as their friend Clyde is making them "heal meals" but doesn't make them soup.
  • In an episode of Madeline called "Madeline's Christmas", all the little girls except Madeline, along with a mouse, Miss Clavel, and Dr Cohn get sick with a severe cold. note  The girls then sing a song about being sick, one line being "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. A hankie and some chicken soup is note  all I want today."
  • In the Martha Speaks episode "Martha in Charge", Helen has laryngitis, and she is served corn soup because her mother Mariella believes it is good for sore throats. However, with Martha note  around, this trope is hard to play straight and is for the most part averted.
  • In the Mighty Magiswords episode "Squirreled Domination", Prohyas stays at home to nurse a sick Dolphin Magisword back to health while Vambre goes off on a mission. Grup insists that his Grup Soup will cure the Dolphin Magisword, but Prohyas and Dolphin Magisword object as Grup won't say what is in the soup.
  • In the Milo episode "Milo's Sore Tummy", Milo the Funny Animal rabbit is Playing Sick and pretending he has a stomachache. His mother Vanessa sees through his act but in order to convince him that sick days are not fun, she feeds him vegetable broth instead of pizza, claiming that you shouldn't eat pizza when you have a stomachache.
  • In "Darby, Solo Sleuth", which is an episode of My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Roo, Tigger, Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore and Beaver all get colds and the cure is a special soup with lemons as the special ingredient.
  • My Little Pony:
    • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
      • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Princess Celestia's pet bird Philomena is thought to be sick by Fluttershy because she keeps coughing and moulting. One of the cures Fluttershy tries on Philomena is soup, but she refuses.
      • In "Three's a Crowd", Discord asks for pumpkin soup to cure his fake croup in his song "Glass of Water".
      • In the short "Ail-icorn", Spike mentions that he tried to cure Twilight's spring allergies with poultices, soup, and even a poultice made of soup.
      • In the Rainbow Roadtrip special, a Flashback to Hope Hollow's glory days shows a sick pony being fed soup by a friend.
    • My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: In "A Little Horse", Pipp requests Sunny to discreetly ask Queen Haven for her Special Sick Day Soup, which Haven used to make for Pipp's sick days when she was younger. Sunny tries dancing around the issue so Queen Haven won't freak out over Pipp's illness, but Haven finally admits that she buys the soup from The Souper Ladle Food Cart and passes it off as her cooking because she's bad at it. Sunny still buys the soup for Pipp, anyway, thinking that it will magically cure her illness, but Pipp tells her that while she's aware of Haven's lie about it, she still appreciates the effort Haven went through to get it for her to cheer her up while she's sick.
  • Pingu: In "Pingu's Grandfather is Sick", Pingu's mother makes soup and feeds it to Pingu's grandfather, who is suffering from measles.
  • Play Kids has a Sick Episode that consists only of a song called "Cover Your Mouth When You Cough!". While this is actually averted, the YouTube video it's on describes it as "speeding up the healing process like a bowl of chicken soup" in the description.
  • In Puff the Magic Dragon, the land of Honalee turns out to be occupied by living sneezes. Luckily, Puff and Jackie previously befriended a giant cook, who is able to make them all chicken soup.
  • In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Endless Summer", Carrot is sick. Mindy gives him chicken noodle soup to help him feel better.
  • Robo Cop The Animated Series: in "Project Deathspore" Robocop's cold is cured by Lewis's chicken soup.
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: At the end of one episode, Scooby has a cold, so Shaggy brings him "chicken soup" – which turns out to be a bowl of water where a live chicken is taking a bath with a scrubbing brush.
    Shaggy: Like, I guess I forgot to take the chicken out, Scoob.
  • In She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Entrapta wraps Hordak in a blanket and makes him soup after he collapses.
  • In the Silly Symphonies version of The Grasshopper and the Ants, the ants nurse the nearly frozen and starved Hop the Grasshopper back to health by giving him a Foot Bath Treatment and feeding him soup.
  • At the end of The Smurfs (1981) episode "Forget Me Smurfs", Sickly Smurf serves the other Smurfs smurf noodle soup when they're sick with colds.
    • At the end of "Master Scruple", Gordy the genie brings Farmer hot soup when the latter is sick in bed.
  • In the South Park episode "Red Man's Greed", they parody and invert the Magical Native American trope by having Stan cure SARS with the folk medicine of the Middle Class White Man: Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, Dayquil, and Sprite.
  • Speed Buggy: The gang feed Speed Buggy hot chicken-flavored antifreeze when he's ill.
  • In the Spongebob Squarepants'' episode "Squidward's Sick Daze", SpongeBob makes soup for Squidward, believing that the squid is genuinely ill (Squidward's actually Playing Sick, but SpongeBob doesn't know that).
  • In one episode of The Tick, Tick gets a cold and needs Arthur to supply him with a constant supply of soup. At the end of the episode, Tick is cured, but Arthur now has the cold, so Tick stops his monologue and heads to the kitchen to make Arthur some soup.
  • In the Tom and Jerry cartoon "Puppy Tale", Tom gets all woozy due to almost drowning. Jerry fishes him out of the water and pours hot soup into his mouth, which revives him.
  • Total Drama: In "Who Can You Trust?", Chef treats Trent's fugu sashimi poisoning with CPR, a shot, and soup.
  • Viva Piñata: In "Sick Day", Fergy serves the sick Pinatas soup in a cup.
  • Work It Out Wombats!: In "Talent Turmoil," Kat and Kit are sick. Ellie heads to their house to see if they need soup.

 
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