Tortilla Soup/Aztec Soup

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Dec 3, 2007 10:16 AM, Barry A. Popik <Bapopik at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Tortilla soup is, perhaps, the most popular soup of the Southwest. It is  not
> merely "soup with tortillas in it." There's a process, a recipe for making
> it. You can't take the "won tons" out of "won ton soup" (yes, that's in  OED),
> add "tortillas," and simply rename it "tortilla soup."

But, interestingly enough, the 2001 movie "Tortilla Soup" (which no
doubt accounts for a good portion of the Googlehits) underwent a
wonton-tortilla substitution of sorts. The screenplay is adapted from
Ang Lee's 1994 film "Eat Drink Man Woman", with a Tawainese family
replaced by a Mexican-American family.


--Ben Zimmer

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