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When a friend recently offered to stock Annie Reed's freezer with food for her convalescence from back surgery, Reed asked for just one dish: chicken noodle soup.

"Growing up, whenever we were sick, Mom fed us chicken soup," recalls Reed, an aqua aerobics instructor. "If we had a cold, she gave us chicken soup. Sore throat? Chicken noodle soup. I came to really love the stuff."

For generations, and across many cultures, chicken soup has been a panacea and pick-me-up, the ultimate comfort food and the medicinal "Jewish penicillin."

"We've done chicken and rice soup for so long — 25 years now," said Mark Smith, owner/chef at the Eclectic Café, which recently celebrated a quarter-century of feeding folks on Tucson's East Side at 7053 E. Tanque Verde Road. "You can always tell when cold and flu season arrives. People start buying it a lot." One customer even ordered the soup to take to a friend who was hospitalized from a rattlesnake bite.

Central Europe's Ashkenazi Jews gave the world chicken soup garnished with noodles, matzoh balls, or eggy custard. Greece offers avgolemono, with lemon and rice added to chicken broth; and China, hot and sour soup. Many versions of Mexico's reviving tortilla soup are made with chicken stock, although local eateries also use beef stock and plain water.

Marilyn Majchrzak, a registered dietitian who is the corporate food development manager for Canyon Ranch Resorts, says there are numerous scientific studies that attest to the value of chicken soup in treating colds and flu.

"I am a firm, firm believer in the medicinal properties of chicken soup," Majchrzak said from her office at the Tucson resort at 8600 E. Rockcliff Road. "There is something soothing about the heat of the soup itself, and it's light, compared to a milk-based soup or something that is heavier. Interestingly enough . . . a 6-ounce serving . . . has an ounce of protein. Your body's trying to fight off an infection, and you need a little more protein. It's a way to get some into you when you don't feel like eating."

Also, Majchrzak said, the fat in the soup can soothe a tender throat, and the warm liquid — as long as you don't use a salt-laden commercial soup — helps you get the fluids you need to fight your resident bug.

Reed's current favorite in the soupstakes is the chicken pho (No. 18 on the menu) served at Pho 88 Vietnamese Restaurant, 2744 N. Campbell Ave. It's an enormous bowl full of rice noodles, chicken and add-your-own garnishes of lime, beans sprouts and holy basil, all floating in a rich, almost minty-tasting broth.

"The key to a great chicken soup is making a terrific stock," said Coralie Satta, owner of Ghini's French Caffe, 1803 E. Prince Road. Satta rotates a bunch of chicken-based soups on the café lunch menu, including chicken garlic, chicken tarragon, chicken tortilla and Chicken Diablo.

Reed agrees. "It's got to have lots of vegetables, and not too many noodles. But the broth is the benchmark."

This means you can't just open a can. You are going to have to make your own stock.

The good news is that chicken stock is easy. And once you have made chicken stock, you simply add your choice of ingredients to the strained stock, simmer briefly, and serve. Of course, you can have the standard bits of celery and carrot along with shredded or diced chicken and rice or noodles. But you could also try sliced mushrooms, or green peas, or chopped tomatoes, or corn kernels.

"I make lots of combinations that I never write down," Satta said.

See the instructions below for making a basic chicken stock, such as Satta uses in most of her soups. For a version made with oven-browned ingredients, see the accompanying recipe for chicken noodle soup.

At the Eclectic Café, Smith and company cook lots of chickens for dishes like chicken salad and chicken burros. He then uses the cooking liquid as soup stock. The Eclectic's soup base does have one secret ingredient — a tiny hint of bright yellow turmeric.

If you are too harried — or too sick — to actually make your own stock, all is not lost. Majchrzak recommends that, at a minimum, you buy the kind of chicken stock that comes in a carton, rather than a can. You can usually find the better quality broth in organic food sections of the supermarket, or at natural-food markets.

Better yet, if you have 15 or 20 minutes, you can greatly improve your purchased stock by sim-mering it with a few vegetables, seasonings and maybe a splash of white wine. This trick works well for sauces made with chicken broth, as well as soup stock.

You can freeze the stock or the complete soup, to have in reserve for emergencies. Just wait to add the noodles until you are ready to serve. Frozen noodles are, as they say, yucky.

Making chicken stock

If you are a well-organized cook, you have been saving raw and cooked poultry scraps, such as bones, wing tips and backs, in the freezer. You can use turkey and duck leftovers, as well as chicken.

If you didn't plan that far ahead, buy an inexpensive whole chicken, or chicken parts with bones. If you want a truly gourmet experience, buy an organic or kosher fowl.

However you get them, you will want a quart or two of chicken pieces or a whole bird. Toss the chicken parts in a big — at least 4-quart and preferably larger — pot. Add: 1 onion, peeled and chopped; 2 stalks of celery with leaves, washed and chopped; 2 carrots, scraped and chopped; a bay leaf; a couple of cloves of garlic, quartered; a few whole peppercorns. You can add a couple of sprigs of parsley or thyme, too, if you like.

Pour in enough cold filtered water to cover everything. Slosh in a quarter cup of white wine (optional). Bring to a boil; if you want a really clear stock, skim the scum that rises to the top as the mixture heats. Reduce heat to a bare simmer, partially cover the pot, and leave to simmer for a couple of hours. Strain, then chill so fat rises to the top and you can skim or spoon it off. Taste your stock; if it's wimpy in flavor, boil it down rapidly to concentrate it.

And there you have it.

If you have used good, meaty chicken parts or a whole chicken, you can use the meat from the stock for chicken soup or salad.

If you want to poach chicken breasts for your soup or for another dish, you can slide them into the stock as it simmers. Just be careful not to overcook the delicate white meat.