When I was a kid and visiting Belgium over the summer

[conuly]

I had a lot of trouble eating ice cream neatly. For some reason I had it in my head that you should eat your cone from the bottom up. (Tip I found out on the internet: If you're using cones that are slightly open at the bottom you can plug up the gap with a marshmallow.)

That same summer my grandmother told me one day that soup was better in hot weather (not that it ever gets that hot in Wavre) because you sweat and that cools you down. I don't know if my grandfather expressed agreement, or if he even was in the room, but I'm certain he didn't disagree.

"Hot food for hot weather" is a widespread folk-ism. My grandmother of course was Walloon, and my grandfather's family was... from... idk, somewhere in Tsarist Russia's general sphere of influence. I don't know if it's entirely true, but people from regions where it's widespread certainly do believe it.

Has anybody ever really mapped where it's found, though? People will say that the grandmothers here or there believe it, but has anybody actually sat down and recorded where this belief is most widespread, and among whom? Or when it started?

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Comments

[fox]

All I can think of is the time on Cheers when Diane asked how the guys could drink ice cold beer on a cold day.

Norm: Cliff?
Diane: What makes you think he has an explanation?
Norm: Five bucks says he’s got one, ten says it’s a doozie.
Cliff: Back when the British ruled the Punjab —
Norm: Ten bucks all the way.

And then Cliff gives that sort of explanation (about hot tea in the hot climate) and Diane says “Okay, then why do you drink ice cold beer on a hot day?” and Cliff thinks for a moment and says “What else are we gonna do with it?”

[jhetley]

Hot soup in hot weather was "tradition" for my Bohemian ancestry.

[dine]

my German grandmother was a believer - summer lunches with her often involved soup

[james]

I grew up believing that you had cold food on a cold day (ice cream) and spicy food on a hot day, not hot soup. But I grew up in the South of the US, though my grandparents were Scottish, English, and Cherokee. Not sure where I got it from.

[fred_mouse]

Ice cream on a cold day was a thing in our family too, but my mother justified it with 'on a hot day, it melts too fast for you to really enjoy it'. No idea whether that is more general in anglo-Australians.

But I also come from a background where the thing to drink on a hot day was tea. I appreciate cold water, but I feel guilty for it in ways that make no sense at all.

[melannen]

Visiting my sister in Iceland I learned that ice cream is for cold days, because then you don't have to worry about it melting. (which, that one's scientifically verifiable at least!)

(Mind you, there are very few days in Iceland where it is warm enough that you would need to eat ice cream to cool down. I wonder if the hot soup story also comes from places with relatively cool summers. Hot soup is great on a dry-ish 80 deg day! Not so much a 100 deg-with-100%-humidity day.)

[conuly]

It is true, Wavre is unlikely to reach 90F on any given day.

[ranunculus]

I have to agree with the: this folk saying must have come from a relatively cool climate sentiment. No way do you want to further heat the body when the temps are above 100F.

[melannen]

People downthread are naming hot places where they do this, but I still think nobody who comes from a place where relative humidity regularly hits 90% in summer truly thinks *more sweat* is a good thing on a hot day.

Truly hot food is actually better than "room temperature armpit sweat" food if "cold" isn't an option though. (and probably safer).

[reynardo]

In the heat of Australian summer (100 F or 38 C is not uncommon) my Dad always insisted that hot tea made you sweat and cooled you down.

[fred_mouse]

I should have read further down the comments -- I mentioned tea in Australian summer in reply to a comment above, although I don't remember the 'because it makes you sweat'.

[ioplokon]

This is what my Moroccan friends would say, too. You drink hot, sweet mint tea.

[adrian_turtle]

An interesting thing to map might be to see which places focus on thermally hot drinks and which focus on spicy foods. I've never heard of a place with a hot climate that doesn't have folkways with one or the other.

[conuly]

That DOES sound like an interesting thing to map.

[readerjane]

My sister-in-law told us that the folks she knew in Chad (this would have been in the 70s) drank hot beverages in hot weather. Same reason - the sweat would cool you down.

[spiffikins]

I never heard this adage growing up, but my friend who grew up in Malaysia told me that they would eat spicy food in hot weather to cool you down.

[conuly]

I'm not sure it's an adage, per se - I was just trying to sum up the reasoning.

[maju]

Growing up in Australia (with English ancestry) I absorbed the idea that it's good to drink hot tea in hot weather, although I don't think I ever heard anybody say it explicitly.

[frandroid]

The Spanish would like to have a word.