The story follows Hetty Pepper, a lower-class woman who has lost her job at a department store. Bargaining with a rib of beef (her last bit of food) she befriends a neighbor and a love interest, who donate ingredients for a stew greater than the sum of its parts. Early in the story the waggish narrator remarks, "You can make oyster soup without oysters, turtle soup without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee, but you can't make beef stew without potatoes and onions," casting the beef rib in much the same role as the stone in Stone Soup.