What is it about chicken soup that soothes us when we’re ill? Primarily it is that someone else did the cooking, I venture to guess.
The hot broth with pieces of celery and carrots floating around noodles and chicken chunks is nourishing but there’s something besides that which sickly souls crave and the bowl of soup provides.

It could be a primal connection to our past. Somewhere, everyone has someone who cared for them in illness or good health. Someone who urged them to eat, urged them to take care and repeatedly furnished them with food, whether soup or cookies or fresh produce or bread. 
Even now when chicken soup can be had at numerous restaurants, or (dread the thought)-out of a can, we usually make some version of chicken and vegetables when tummies are awry with virus or shredded nerves over bad news or just plain down-in-the- dumps.
That’s why last week I went looking for any old-time chicken/vegetable dish that transported me back to old times in old towns with old grandmothers gathering the ingredients in a well worn enamel sink with just cold water running in. I wanted to go back as far as my own grandmother and grandpa pop to find comfort.
Sometime about 1941, a cookbook was published from gathered local recipes. Its author was Jonathan Winter’s mother, Alice Bahman. One of the comfort recipes was from Hildegard Gorman who lived on R.R. 1 in Osborn, south of today’s Osborn Road bridge.  Just reading the piece brought a smile, a mental picture of an elderly woman preparing chicken, pulling it from the hot oven, lifting the lid, provocative vapors escaping to silently call family into table.
Recorded here exactly as it was written over 60 years ago, it is classic soulful work of love.

Chicken in Tomato Sauce
1 chicken cut into serving pieces salt & pepper each piece
Roll in flour
Brown quickly in hot fat
1 cup water
Cover roaster and place in moderate oven (325 degrees) until done.
(Time depending upon whether you are using a young frying chicken or an old hen.)

Tomato Sauce
2 tablespoons melted fat in sauce pan
1 clove chopped, minced garlic
4 tablespoons flour
Stir and add:
1 tablespoon sugar and 1 quart tomato juice
Stir and cook slowly until thickened. When the chicken is almost done
(about ½ hour left to cook) pour the tomato sauce over the chicken,
Toss in a few sprigs of parsley, a stalk of celery. Cover again and return
to the oven until meat is done.
Recipe Source: A Wize Collection of Unusual Recipes by Alice Bahman.