My wife makes the most delicious minestrone. My wife is a foodie in general and an excellent cook who can come into a kitchen, see what is available and whip up something delicious without a recipe. Even so, her minestrone stands out – thick with vegetables and potatoes and tasty with Parmesan cheese. Writing this post has made my mouth water. As good as her minestrone is, it is even better the next day. Over night the soup thickens and when you reheat it some of the liquid cooks off making a heartier, more flavorful soup.

The Rabbis were well aware of the tendency of some foods to be even better if they cooked even longer after they were fully cooked. Cooking is not a prohibited labor on Shabbat, but stoking or igniting a fire is. Many of the rules related to cooking and Shabbat are Rabbinic rules (not biblical prohibitions) to ensure that we do not rake coals or do anything else that would be considered stoking a flame. In particular, we look at when food may be left on a stove once Shabbat has begun and when during Shabbat we can remove food from a stove and return it to the stove.

All of the debate concerns fully cooked food. We may be tempted to stoke a fire for food that was not fully cooked to encourage cooking. But we have a lot of debate about the conditions under which we can leave cooked food on a stove and when we can return cooked food to a stove. The fuel matters. Fuel that burns hot must be shoveled to the side or banked with ashes or we might be tempted to encourage heating by stoking the fuel. A note in the Schottenstein Edition of this Daf notes that for modern ranges and ovens, we follow the Talmudic rules by placing a piece of tin over the burners. We do this because the tin is analogous to banking the coals of an ancient oven with ash and reducing the intensity of the heat.

In many opinions, the Rabbis conclude that we can leave cooked food on a stove – even if it improves as the liquid condenses – just like my wife’s minestrone. Apparently, the Rabbis in Babylonia did not subscribe to this opinion and believed that food that improves with additional heating could not be left on a stove with sufficient heat to improve the food. Other Rabbis said that Babylonians could follow that custom, but they would not. These Babylonian Rabbis never had my wife’s minestrone the day after she made it!