I bought my first set of soup plates at an outlet in Kittery, Maine, just after graduating from college. I was living in a tiny apartment and teaching myself to cook from The Silver Palate Cookbook. One of the first meals I served in those soup plates was bouillabaisse. It was a twenty-ninth birthday dinner for the man who eventually became my husband.

 

For folks who are unfamiliar with the term, soup plates are as wide as dinner dishes, and very shallow, the better to admire the elements of a soup, from precisely cut vegetables to lengthy ribbons of noodles. They can be used for pasta and other “saucy” entrees, but are particularly appropriate for soup that is served as a meal.

 

And while an oversized coffee mug or everyday cereal bowl can certainly serve soup in a utilitarian way, I contend that soup deserves better. This is not just a comfort food, but a culinary chameleon, with personalities ranging from rustic tosophisticated. Only the proper plates confer on it the respect it deserves.

 

As for the bouillabaisse, it was a success, and the first of many meals together. Before long, we were married.

 

One of our first marital fights – a scant month after the wedding – revolved around soup. A loving bride, I prepared a hearty, homemade chicken soup, carefully following my mother’s over-the-phone directions. This was the same chicken soup my grandmother had made on holidays; the same soup my mother made for me, when I came home from college for long weekends. It is a soup with a heritage.

 

Paul’s response was underwhelming.

 

 “Great soup, Hon,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”

 

Paul grew up in an Italian family more traditional than my own, in which soup was indeed a prelude to generous entrée or two.

 

I’d looked at him, appalled.

 

“You just ate dinner,” I said.

 

He looked at me blankly.

 

“Soup’s an appetizer,” he replied.

 

 “You’ve got your veggies, you’ve got your protein, you’ve got your carb,” I told him, my voice rising. “It’s a full meal. It just has water all over it.”

 

We’ve since learned to pick our battles. I have agreed that, in particular circumstances, a soup might well serve as an appetizer, and he has learned to love soup as a meal. In the intervening years, he’s been willing to do it all: white bean, spicy lentil, and the always popular Italian wedding soup. He’s spurned only pumpkin soup, which he claims would be just right if it were poured into a waiting crust, then baked. We all have our quirks.

 

Years passed, children arrived. We lived in New England, and we used the soup plates all year long: not just through the six-month winters, but also in summer, for gazpacho. All told, we probably used the plates two to three times a week; so by conservative estimates, my family ate at least 2,080 meals from those soup plates.

 

The kids didn’t know that soup was sold in cans until they hit elementary school and started having play dates. They came home angry that we’d held out on them by simmering pots on the stove, instead of stocking the pantry so that it looked like an Andy Warhol painting. They went through a spate of preferring manufactured swill before returning to the fold, the Prodigal Son and Daughter.

 

Then we moved to a house with a ceramic kitchen floor, rather than our accustomed vinyl. We were shocked to discover that dropped plates shattered rather than bounced. We lost half the set in rapid succession before we learned the art of the quick save.,We wiggled by on three soup plates rather than four, only because Paul works nights.

 

Which brings us to a recent dinner. Company was coming, and I had a bright Thai seafood soup on the stove, having meticulously prepared a stock from shrimp shells and fresh ginger. I went to set the table and realized: we had six people to feed, and only three soup plates.

 

No problem, I figured, I’d stop by the Big Bed and Bath store. Three white soup plates. Six, if I wanted to be all matchy-matchy. How hard could it be?

 

Pretty hard. I trekked from discount stores to department stores. There were serving pieces designated for chips, tacos, popcorn, and nuts. There were specially shaped plates for deviled eggs and corn on the cob. But there were no soup plates. Apparently, there are fashions in dishware. And in the words of the immortal Heidi Klum, my beloved soup plates are most decidedly out.

 

The horror.

 

I finally found them at the Chain Import Store; you know, the one with the colorful window displays. Towering stacks of soup plates were displayed immediately inside the entrance, praise be. I snapped up six and hurried home to finish making the seafood dinner, part of a convivial evening that also included wine and a cranberry-pecan pie. I’m hoping this set of soup plates, like the last one, will last for 25 years, well into my retirement. Perhaps then they will be back in fashion and easier to find.

 

Or maybe they’ll outlive me, and be filled by the prodigal children.