Soup

File:Soupe à l'oignon.jpg

French onion soup

Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot – though it is sometimes served chilled – made by cooking or otherwise combining meat or vegetables with stock, milk, or water. According to The Oxford Companion to Food, "soup" is "the most general of the terms which apply to liquid savoury dishes"; others include broth, bisque, consommé, potage and many more.

The consistency of soups varies from thin to thick: some soups are light and delicate; others are so substantial that they verge on being stews. Although most soups are savoury, sweet soups are familiar in some parts of Europe.

Soups have been made since prehistoric times, and have evolved over the centuries. Originally "sops" referred to pieces of bread covered with savoury liquid; gradually the term "soup" was transferred to the liquid itself. Soups are common to the cuisines of all continents and have been served at the grandest of banquets as well as in the poorest peasant homes. Some soups from Asia have become familiar in the west, but others remain almost entirely exclusive to their region of origin.

Name

The term soup, or words like it, can be found in many languages. Similar terms include the Italian , the German , the Danish , the Russian (pronounced "soup"), the Spanish and the Polish . Other terms embraced by "soup" include broth, bisque, consommé, potage and many more.

According to the lexicographer John Ayto, "the etymological idea underlying the word soup is that of 'soaking'". In his 2012 The Diner's Dictionary Ayto writes that the word dates back to an unrecorded post-classical Latin verb – "to soak", which was derived from the prehistoric Germanic root "sup–", which also produced the English "sup" and "supper". The term passed into Old French as , meaning a piece of bread soaked in liquid" and, by extension, "broth poured on to bread". The earliest recorded use in English of "sop" in the first sense dates from 1340. The ancient conjunction of bread and soup still exists not only in the croutons often served with soup, and the slice of baguette and Gruyère floating on traditional French onion soup, but also in bread-based soups including the German (black bread soup), the Russian and the Italian (tomato pulp). The records the term "" in French use from the twelfth century but adds that it is probably earlier. The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of the word in English in the fourteenth century: "Soppen nim wyn & sucre & make me an stronge soupe". The first known cookery book in English, The Forme of Cury, c. Template:Trim, refers to several "broths", but not to soups.

The Oxford Companion to Food (OCF) comments that soups can stray, "over what is necessarily an imprecisely demarcated frontier", into the realm of stews. The Companion adds that this tendency is noticeable among fish soups such as bouillabaisse. The Hungarian goulash is regarded by many as a stew but by others, particularly in Hungary, as a soup (). The food writer Harold McGee contrasts soups with sauces in On Food and Cooking, commenting that they can be so similar that soups may only be distinguished as less intensely flavoured, permitting them to be "eaten as a food in themselves, not an accent."

History

Prehistory

The cooking of soup or something akin can be dated back to the Upper Palaeolithic period. Small boiling pits are present on the Gravettian site Pavlov VI. Some archaeologists conjecture that early humans employed hides and watertight baskets to boil liquids.

Ancient times and later

In 1988 the food writer M. F. K. Fisher commented, "It is impossible to think of any good meal, no matter how plain or elegant, without soup or bread in it. It is almost as hard to find any recorded menu, ancient or modern, without one or both". In her 2010 work Soup: A Global History, Janet Clarkson writes that the ancient Romans had a great variety of soups. (On the Subject of Cooking), a collection of Roman recipes compiled in the fourth or fifth century from earlier manuscripts gives details of numerous ingredients, mostly vegetable.

File:Bartolomeo2 restored.jpeg

Open-air soup cooking, by Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570

After the fall of the Roman Empire soups continued to feature in European and Arab cuisines. Clarkson writes that the earliest known German cookery book, (A Book of Good Food) published in about 1345, includes recipes for many soups, including one made with beer and caraway seeds, another with leeks, almond milk and rice meal, others with carrots and almond milk or goose cooked in broth with garlic and saffron. The early fifteenth-century French book (From the Kitchen) has many recipes for potages and "sops" including several regional variants.

During the seventeenth century the soup itself, rather than the "sops" it contained, became seen as the most important element of the dish. One of the most famous cookery books of its time was Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook (1660). Clarkson comments that about a fifth of May's recipes are for soups of one kind or another.

In the eighteenth century, meals at grand European tables were still served in the style that had persisted since the Middle Ages, with successive courses of three or four dishes placed on the table simultaneously and then replaced by three or more contrasting dishes. Soup was typically part of the first course. Exceptionally, at particularly grand dinners, a first course might consist of four different soups, succeeded by four dishes of fish and then four of meat.Template:Refn In the early nineteenth century a new style of dining became fashionable in Europe and elsewhere: – Russian-style service: dishes were served one at a time, usually beginning with soup.

Asia

In Asian countries soup became a familiar breakfast dish, but has not, according to Clarkson, done so in the west.Template:Refn In China and Japan, soup came to have a different place in meals. As in the west, there was a distinction between thick and thin soups, but the latter would often be treated as a beverage, to be drunk from the bowl rather than eaten with a spoon. In Japan miso soup became the best known of the thick type, with many variations on the basic theme of dashi, a stock made from kombu (edible seaweed) and dried fermented tuna, with miso (fermented soy bean) paste. Clarkson writes, "Miso soup is the traditional breakfast soup in the ordinary home, and the traditional end to a formal banquet". In China, soups wholly unknown in the west were developed, including bird's nest and shark's fin soups. Snake soup continues to be an iconic tradition in Cantonese culture, and that of Hong Kong. In China, rat soup is considered equal to oxtail soup.

Indian cuisine includes (sometimes called pepper-water), a thin, spicy soup, typically made with lentils, tomatoes, and seasonings including tamarind, pepper, and chillies. In Thai cuisine are soups: the most popular are made with prawns and made from galangal, chicken and coconut milk. is a Vietnamese soup, usually made from beef stock and spices with noodles and thinly sliced beef or chicken added. In Filipino cookery is a soup made with meat, shrimp, or fish and flavoured with a sour ingredient such as tamarind or guava; also from the Philippines is , a goat soup. The soups of Indonesia include (chicken), (shrimp with rice vermicelli) and (crab). is a soup served in the Maldives, with chunks of tuna in it.

Two soups from Armenia are a cucumber and yoghurt soup called , and , containing lamb and fruit; is a dumpling soup from Azerbaijan; Tibetan cooking includes tsamsuk, made from grains, butter, soya and cheese. An Iranian summer soup, , is made with yoghurt, cucumber, and mint. Turkish is made from the meat from animal heads and feet.

Europe and the Americas

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Soup, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1865

In the OCF Alan Davidson writes that although soup is now typically served as the first of several courses in western menus, in many places around the world substantial soups have historically been an entire meal for poorer people, particularly in rural areas. Many Russian peasants subsisted on rye bread and soup made from pickled cabbage. Charitable soup-kitchens preparing soup and supplying it to the needy, either free or at a very low charge, were known in the Middle East in the sixteenth century. From the late eighteenth century, soup-kitchens (in German , in French, ) were set up in Germany, England and France and elsewhere. In the 1840s the chef Alexis Soyer established a soup-kitchen in the East End of London to feed Huguenot silk weavers impoverished by cheap imports. During the Irish famine, which began in 1845, he set up a kitchen in Dublin capable of feeding a thousand people an hour. In the United States soup-kitchens were set up in the 1870s. During the Great Depression, Al Capone established and sponsored a soup-kitchen in Chicago.

From the sixteenth century onwards, Paris was known for its street vendors selling soup,Template:Refn and in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, Les Halles, the large central food market, became known for its stalls selling onion soup with a substantial topping of grated cheese, put under a grill and served . According to one writer, the classic transcended class distinctions: Template:Blockindent

The many cuisines of Europe have a wide range of soups. Among the soups of Italy are , and , respectively a vegetable broth, consommé with poached eggs, and a meat broth with eggs and cheese. From Belgium there are – a pea and bean soup – and , a vegetable soup with fine vermicelli and milk. Bulgarian cuisine includes , a cold yoghurt and cucumber soup Dutch soups include – a split pea soup – and , a brown bean soup eaten with rye bread and bacon. A soup from the Faeroe Islands is , made with dried mutton. , is a German split pea soup with pig's ear. , a Latvian fish soup incorporates whole pieces of cooked fish with potato; The Finnish kesäkeitto is a light summer soup of seasonal vegetables cooked in milk and water; the Swedish is a meat and vegetable soup; the Norwegian is cauliflower soup with egg yolks and cream. , from Luxembourg, is made with pork offal, and finished with prunes soaked in local white wine.

a bowl of green coloured soup

Portuguese

Maltese soups include ("widow's soup"), made with green and white vegetables and garnished with a poached egg and cheese, and a light fish soup flavoured with garlic and marjoram. two soups from Poland are , a crayfish and beetroot soup, served chilled and , yellow-pea soup with barley. Portuguese soups include (chicken) and (potato and cabbage). Cullen skink (smoked haddock soup) and nettle soup are of Scottish origin. A Welsh soup, cawl, is typically made with lamb or beef together with vegetables including potatoes, swedes and carrots. Slovenian cuisine includes , a meat and vegetable soup. Russian soups include (cabbage soup), (vegetable soup with meat or fish), (pickled cucumber soup), and (fish soup).

Soups from the Americas include a spiny lobster soup from Belize, Cajun crayfish bisque, and gumbo, a hearty soup (or stew) traditionally made from meat or shellfish with tomatoes, vegetables, herbs, and spices, thickened with okra. In the Caribbean and Latin America sancocho is a thick soup typically consisting of meat, tubers, and other vegetables. soups are found in the West Indies and Brazil; is a Colombian avocado soup), and Mexico has a black bean soup. Honduras and the US both have a tripe soup, the former called and the latter pepper pot soup. The clam chowder of New England has entered the international culinary repertoire. An American regional favourite is Maryland crab soup.

Africa and Australasia

Arab typically contains meat and oats; Egyptian food includes soup. The Moroccan contains chickpeas, meat and rice. In Nigeria, according to Davidson, "soupy stews or stewlike soups" are popular. He gives as examples soup, often made with offal, palm oil, carob, lemon basil, and egusi powder, and various okra soups. He adds that in Nigeria soup made from goat is "so important that it is usually served at the most important functions". Bill Odarty also highlights goat soup from Liberia. Other Nigerian soups include the spinach-based soup Efo. Soups from other parts of Africa include Cheruba – a lamb and vegetable soup with lima beans or chickpeas – from north Africa, A West African speciality is groundnut soup. East African cuisine includes bean soup with tomato, onion, pepper and curry powder. Abenkwan, from West Africa, is a soup of crab meat, pulped palm nuts and lamb. Supuya papai, from Tanzania, is a cream soup containing papaya and onion. A Congolese green papaya soup is made with bacon fat, chicken broth, milk and red pepper. South African soups include curried snoek head soup.

Australasian soups include two from New Zealand: toheroa (clam) and kumara (sweet potato and chilli). Davidson remarks favourably on the Australian wallabi-tail soup.

Modern times

In the western cuisine of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been and are numerous soups. Auguste Escoffier divided them into two main types:

• Clear soups, which include plain and garnished consommés
• Thick soups, which comprise the purées, veloutés, and creams

He added, "A third class, which is independent of either of the above, in that it forms part of plain, household cookery, embraces vegetable soups and garbures or gratinéd soups. But in important dinners – by this I mean rich dinners – only the first two classes are recognised".

plate of brightly multi-coloured vegetable soup, with pasta

Minestrone

Louis Saulnier's , first published in 1914, contains six pages of details of (clear soups), two pages on (moistened with water, milk or thin white stock), eight pages on (soups thickened with egg yolks) and (thickened with double cream), as well as a further three pages on fifty-three – foreign soups – including borscht from Russia, clam chowder from the United States, cock-a-leekie from Scotland, minestrone from Italy, mock turtle from England, and mulligatawny from British India.

The French distinction between clear and thick soups is echoed in other languages: in German and ; in Italian and ; and in Spanish and . Many soups are fundamentally the same in the cuisines of various countries, with minor local variations. Oxtail soup, a familiar item in British and American cooking, is one of several oxtail soups from round the world, including one from Sichuan, others from Austria (), Jamaica, South Africa and the French , oxtail consommé thickened with tapioca, garnished with asparagus and diced mushrooms.

Elizabeth David comments in French Provincial Cooking (1960), "No doubt because the tin and the package have become so universal, people are astonished by the true flavours of a well-balanced home-made soup and demand more helpings if only to make sure that their noses and palates are not deceiving them". In their Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child write: Template:Blockindent

Cold soups

bowl of brightly coloured vegetable soup

Gazpacho

Cold soups are a particular variation on the traditional soup. Two well-known chilled soups are the Franco-American vichyssoise and the Spanish gazpacho. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the former as "A soup made with potatoes, leeks, and cream, usually served chilled", and the latter as "A cold Spanish vegetable soup consisting of onions, cucumbers, pimentos, etc., chopped very small with bread and put into a bowl of oil, vinegar, and water".

Sweet soups

Fruit soups are well known in Germany and Nordic countries. Although they may sometimes be served at the beginning of a meal they are sweet dishes. Davidson instances , also known as , a red berry soup popular in Denmark, other parts of Scandinavia and Germany, , a creamy lemon soup from Finland, and the Middle Eastern , made with dried fruits. Other fruits used to make sweet soups include apples, blueberries, cherries, gooseberries, rhubarb and rose-hips.

Sour soups

Davidson mentions a category, "sour soups", important in northern, eastern and central Europe. Some have a fermented beer base or use Sauerkraut, others are soured with vinegar, pickled beetroot, lemon or yoghurt. Examples include (above), , a meat and vegetable soup found in many coutries of eastern Europe, north Africa and Asia, and , a fish soup from Indonesia. Żurek, from Poland, is a sour bread soup based not on meat or vegetable stock but on fermented cereal such as rye. According to a Polish cookery book, "it is always sour, salty, and creamy at the same time".

Portable, tinned and dried soups

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Advertisement for Campbell's soup, c. Template:Trim

drawing of a creature with the body and front flippers of a turtle and the head and feet of a cow

The Mock Turtle in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Food preservation has, in Clarkson's phrase, "always been a preoccupation of the human animal", allowing food to be kept for long periods. In her Domestic Cookery (1806), Maria Rundell gave a recipe for "Portable Soup – a very useful thing" – highly concentrated meat stock that set to a solid consistency: for a bowl of soup it was only necessary to dissolve some in hot water. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Royal Navy had been victualling its ships with portable soup for some years. Recipes were published under many names; Clarkson lists "veal glew", "cake soup", "cake gravey", "broth cakes", "solid soop", "portmanteau pottage", "pocket soup", "carry soup and "soop always in readiness".

In 1810 an English inventor called Peter Durand was granted a patent for the first tin can for soup. The first commercial canning factory opened in England in 1813; it had a capacity of only six cans an hour; each can was cut by hand, filled and the lid soldered on individually. With advances in technology the canning of food had expanded by the end of the century and companies such as Heinz were promoting their soups as gourmet products indistinguishable from home-made versions. In 1897 Heinz's rival Campbell's introduced condensed canned soups, to be diluted with water to produce double the volume.Template:Refn The first five soups in Campbell's range were tomato, chicken, oxtail, consommé, and vegetable. According to the food historian Reay Tannahill, tomato soup did not become popular in the US or Britain until then.

Drying is one of the oldest methods of preserving food, and in the nineteenth century Soyer praised commercially dried vegetables as a good ingredient of soldiers' soup during the Crimean War. Dried soups remained in military use into the 1950s, but it was not until the mid-twentieth century that manufacturers began extensively marketing them for domestic use. The Good Nutrition Guide (2008) commented, "Although many types of processed soup have been criticised for their salt levels, packet soups are by far the worst". Subsequently, some manufacturers have experimented with reduced-salt packet soups. A trial in France in 2012 found that reducing salt in chicken noodle soup by more than thirty per cent did not affect consumers' liking for the product.

In literature

Soups and sops are frequently encountered in English literature. In the King James Bible, Jesus identifies his forthcoming betrayer: "'He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it'. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas" (In the New English Bible this is given as "'It is the man to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish'. Then, after dipping it in the dish, he took it out and gave it to Judas"). The figurative use of "milksop" – literally bread dipped in milk – to mean a feeble, timid or ineffectual person is found in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's Richard III. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bingley is kept waiting to announce his forthcoming ball until his cook has made enough White Soup, a soup containing veal stock and almonds, much favoured for dances at the time. One of Lewis Carroll's best-known characters, the Mock Turtle, who owes his name to the eponymous soup, sings a song that begins "Beautiful Soup, so rich and green/ Waiting in a hot tureen!"

Gallery

• Tom yum
  Tom yum
• Chicken phở
  Chicken phở
• Seafood chowder
  Seafood chowder
• Borscht
  Borscht
• Okroshka
  Okroshka
• Vegetable beef barley soup
  Vegetable beef barley soup
• Chicken pasta soup
  Chicken pasta soup
• Chunky tomato soup
  Chunky tomato soup
• A thick pea soup garnished with a tortilla accent
  A thick pea soup garnished with a tortilla accent
• Cream of asparagus soup
  Cream of asparagus soup
• Cheese soup
  Cheese soup
• Algerian soup
  Algerian soup

See also

• Lists of foods
• List of bean soups
• List of fish and seafood soups
• Soup and sandwich
• Soup spoon
• Stone Soup
• Three grand soups

Further reading

• Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (2002). New York: Free Press Template:ISBN
• Jennifer Harvey Lang, ed., Larousse Gastronomique, American Edition (1988). New York: Crown Publishers Template:ISBN
• Morton, Mark. Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (2004). Toronto: Insomniac Press Template:ISBN