The most traditional recipe of Paraguayan soup is made with finely ground cornmeal, eggs, milk, onion, animal fat, coarse salt, and fresh cheese. Although there is no verified history of its creation or origin, there are two strong hypotheses about how it might have come about.
The older version states that when the European Jesuits arrived, the Guarani people living in what is now Paraguayan territory offered them meat from animals they had hunted. The Spaniards ate gratefully, but once the meat was gone and they were still hungry, the natives offered a meal made of cornmeal wrapped in banana leaves and cooked. This cake was given to the Jesuit guests, who were told: "so’o opa», which in Spanish means "the meat is gone".
The other story says that Paraguay's first president, Carlos Antonio López Irala, had some foreign guests. For this, he asked his cook to prepare a white soup that he liked, made with milk, cornmeal, eggs, and cheese. But the president's cook got distracted while cooking, and the soup turned out to be excessively solid. To fix the mistake, she added cheese to the dough, placed it in a dish with fat, and put it over the fire. She cut it into portions and served them, telling everyone that what they were about to taste was called "Sopa Paraguaya".
