11/02/2026
Our Family's Italian Wedding Soup Recipe:
This recipe is from our great-great- grandmother Carmela LaSena – a Sicilian immigrant and mother of five who stuffed mattresses at a factory by day and sold bathtub gin during Prohibition by night to support her children after the early death of her husband.
Many of the substitutions for traditional ingredients are borne of the ingenuity required by poverty. Egg drop takes the place of pasta, which was too expensive to buy and too time-consuming to make. The mixture of meats is symbolic of what was provided by our great-grandfather Sam, who was apprenticed to a butcher at seven years old and paid weekly with a bag of meat scraps. We blend the mirepoix because she used to chop it ultra-fine, the only way to ensure that her children didn’t pick out the vegetables.
It has since evolved to further accommodate the life and budget of a working chef – shortcuts, brand loyalties, and all.
Broth Ingredients:
-A dozen mini chicken wings
-9 cups chicken broth (College Inn brand preferred)
-Chicken bouillon to taste
-½ tsp sugar
Broth Instructions:
1. Boil the wings in chicken broth with 1 tsp of chicken bouillon for 1 ½ – 2 hours.
2. Add more chicken bouillon 1 tsp at a time until it tastes good to you.
3. Add 1/2 tsp sugar. Taste, add another ½ tsp more if needed. Do not exceed 1 tsp.
4. Remove wings from broth. Once wings are cooled, remove meat from bones and set aside for use in another recipe.
Meatball Ingredients
-16 oz of ground beef/pork/veal mix
-4 slices of potato bread (Martin’s brand preferred)
-2 tsp dried parsley
-1 tsp Salt
-½ tsp Pepper
Meatball Instructions:
1. In a large mixing bowl add the meat, parsley, salt, and pepper.
2. Remove all four corners of crust from the slices of potato bread.
3. Wet the bread (briefly) in water and squeeze dry.
4. Add to the bowl, mixing thoroughly by hand.
5. Form into tiny meatballs (the size of a cherry, or ¾ inch diameter)
Soup Ingredients:
-4 eggs
-1 yellow onion
-3 large carrots, peeled
-3 stalks of celery
-Pinch of salt
Soup Instructions:
1. Drop the meatballs into the simmering broth.
2. Start a timer for 30 minutes as you follow the rest of the recipe – once the timer goes off, the soup will be done.
3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs with a pinch of salt.
4. Pour egg into boiling broth through the tines of a fork, slowly.
5. Blend onion, carrots, and celery in a blender until ultra-fine. Add to soup.
