48 Fun Facts About Soup

Which thick Córdoban purée of tomato, olive oil and garlic is topped with jamón serrano?

Salmorejo leaves out the cucumber and peppers that go into gazpacho, and its olive oil is blended in little by little until the soup becomes a thick, creamy emulsion.

In Old French, what did 'soupe' originally mean?

Bread soaked in liquid was the soupe itself, and the Old French verb for eating the evening meal, which gave English 'supper', probably grew from the same word.

How did the French chef Auguste Escoffier divide soups?

Into clear and thick: consommés made up the clear class and purées, veloutés and creams the thick one, and a menu offering two soups had to serve one of each.

Which American company introduced condensed canned soup?

Campbell's took most of the water out of its soup, so a smaller can was far cheaper to ship and could sell for a dime instead of more than 30 cents.

Which Chicago gangster ran a free soup kitchen for the unemployed during the Great Depression?

Al Capone sponsored the kitchen in an apparent bid to clean up his public image, and it served breakfast, lunch and dinner to jobless Chicagoans.

The red and white of the classic condensed-soup can were borrowed from which Ivy League football team's uniforms?

Cornell: in 1898 a company executive, Herberton Williams, watched Cornell play Penn and was so taken by the red-and-white uniforms that he persuaded the firm to use them.

Which artist's 1962 paintings of soup cans became a pop art icon?

Andy Warhol's 32 canvases stayed together because dealer Irving Blum persuaded early buyers to give theirs back, then paid Warhol $1,000 for the set in monthly instalments.

Which Thanksgiving side was invented in a soup company's test kitchen?

Green bean casserole began when the Associated Press asked the test kitchen for an easy vegetable side made from things most households already kept in the pantry.

Where can the origins of ramen be traced to?

Yokohama Chinatown's noodle soups inspired Rairaiken, which opened in Tokyo's Asakusa in 1910 with Chinese cooks hired from the Chinatown and adapted the dish for Japanese diners.

What gives ramen noodles their yellow colour and springy bite?

Alkaline water, kansui, turns the flour's natural flavonoid pigments yellow at high pH and gives the noodles their mix of stretch and firmness.

Who invented instant noodles in 1958?

Momofuku Ando tinkered for about a year in his backyard shed before flash-frying cooked noodles into dried blocks that came back to life in hot water within minutes.

Which Japanese city is the birthplace of miso ramen?

Sapporo's miso ramen is credited to the restaurant Aji no Sanpei, and its rich, lard-slicked pork broth, often topped with butter and sweetcorn, suits Hokkaido's snowy winters.

Which country is pho from?

Pho is from Vietnam, where it took shape near Hanoi in the early 1900s once French colonial demand put beef, long kept mainly for farm work, on the menu.

Which kind of noodle goes into pho?

Flat rice noodles, bánh phở, fill the bowl, and the same fresh sheets, left uncut, are rolled around stir-fried meat and herbs to make phở cuốn.

How does southern-style pho differ from the northern version?

A sweeter, cloudier broth marks southern pho, a style that grew after the 1954 partition sent northern migrants south, where cooks added bean sprouts, hoisin sauce and heaps of fresh herbs.

Which vegetable gives borscht its colour?

Beetroot turns borscht red, but the name also covers other sour soups, such as green borscht made from sorrel and other leafy greens.

Which country's borscht tradition did UNESCO list as intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?

Ukraine's borscht-cooking culture was inscribed on 1 July 2022, months into the Russian invasion, on UNESCO's urgent-safeguarding list, with the war's threat to the tradition cited.

Which wild plant was fermented to make the original borscht?

Common hogweed stems, leaves and flower heads were chopped, covered with water and left to ferment, and the word borshch is traced to the old Slavic name for the plant.

At what temperature is Andalusian gazpacho traditionally served?

Chilled: Andalusians lean on it through long, hot summers, and it is often poured into a tall glass and drunk rather than eaten from a bowl.

Before tomatoes were added in the 19th century, what colour was gazpacho?

Pale white: early gazpacho was a pounded mix of garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt and water, sometimes with almonds, and it only turned red once tomatoes went in.

Which ingredient thickens a traditional gazpacho?

Stale bread goes into the mortar early: garlic is pounded first, then soaked bread, oil and salt make a paste, and only then are the ripe vegetables worked in.

Which French port is bouillabaisse from?

Marseille is the home of bouillabaisse, which began as a fishermen's dish made from the bony rockfish they could not sell; a 1980 charter by the city's restaurateurs codified the recipe.

What does the name 'bouillabaisse' literally describe?

Boiling then lowering the heat: the name is usually traced to Provençal words for 'boil' and 'lower', because once the broth boils the heat is turned down so the fish can cook.

What is rouille, served with bouillabaisse?

Garlic and saffron mayonnaise goes with the broth, which is traditionally served first, with the fish brought afterwards as a separate course.

What is the main difference between New England and Manhattan clam chowder?

Cream against tomato is the split, and in 1939 a Maine legislator who had jokingly drafted a bill banning tomatoes from chowder saw the tomato-free version win a cook-off.

Which French novelist's cookery dictionary tells of an exiled Polish king who stopped at an inn for onion soup?

Alexandre Dumas wrote that King Stanislas, Louis XV's father-in-law, liked the soup so much that he refused to travel on until he had learned how to make it.

Which stock is normally used in French onion soup?

Beef stock is the usual choice, but some well-known cooks break ranks and make the soup with chicken stock or simply water.

Which sitcom's gruff 'Soup Nazi' refused to serve customers who broke his strict ordering rules?

Seinfeld modelled the character on Manhattan soup vendor Al Yeganeh, who was offended by the portrayal even though the episode made his little shop famous.

What are the two basic components of miso soup?

Fermented paste and dashi stock are the base, and the paste goes in only once the pot is off the heat, since hard cooking dulls its flavour and aroma.

Which of these is a common base for the stock in miso soup?

Dried kelp, kombu, is heated only until the water nears a simmer, because letting it bubble hard can make the stock bitter.

Which seaweed is the classic partner of tofu in a bowl of miso soup?

Wakame is a staple of Japanese and Korean cooking, yet it has spread around the world on ship hulls and is listed among the world's 100 worst invasive species.

What are the nests in bird's nest soup actually made of?

Solidified swiftlet saliva is normally white, and the prized red 'blood nests' contain no blood: vapours from droppings where the birds roost turn them red.

Which Fujian soup of abalone, sea cucumber and scallops simmers for hours in a sealed jar?

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall began, in one legend, as a traveller's food warmed in a clay wine jar in Fuzhou, and its aroma tempted a vegetarian monk to leap the monastery wall.

Where were the nests for bird's nest soup traditionally harvested?

Limestone caves in Borneo such as Gomantong in Sabah are still worked by collectors who climb to the cave roof on long rattan ladders to gather the nests.

The name 'mulligatawny' comes from Tamil words meaning what?

Pepper water was a meatless broth from Madras, and British cooks turned it into a heartier soup by adding chicken or mutton.

Which Alice in Wonderland character is named after a Victorian soup made from a calf's head?

The Mock Turtle is, the Queen tells Alice, 'the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from', so John Tenniel drew it as a turtle with a calf's head.

What is used to clarify a consommé?

Egg whites go into the stock while it is still cold, and as it heats they rise into a foamy layer on top that catches the specks clouding the liquid.

Which Polish soup is made from fermented rye flour and served with white sausage?

Żurek is both fasting food and feast food: a meatless version is eaten through Lent, and a rich one full of sausage is served on holidays, including Easter.

Why was shark fin soup served at Chinese weddings and business banquets?

Its price signalled wealth and prestige, although the fin itself is nearly tasteless, and in 2012 China said it would stop serving the soup at official banquets.

In Scandinavian tellings of the Stone Soup tale, what replaces the stone?

A nail: in one Swedish telling a tramp promises an old woman broth from a four-inch nail, then talks her into adding everything that makes it a real soup.

Filé powder, one of gumbo's traditional thickeners, is made from the dried leaves of which tree?

Sassafras leaves, dried and ground into filé, came to gumbo from the Choctaw, and cooks use the powder to thicken the pot when fresh okra is out of season.

Cullen skink, the thick Scottish soup, is traditionally built around which smoked fish?

Haddock is the heart of this smoked-fish soup from Cullen, a fishing town on the Moray Firth that now hosts an annual Cullen Skink World Championship.

Chef Louis Diat invented chilled vichyssoise while head chef at which New York hotel?

The Ritz-Carlton was where Diat, hunting for a new cold soup, remembered his mother's hot leek-and-potato soup, which the family cooled in warm weather with cold milk.

Mexican menudo is a red-chilli soup made from which part of the cow?

Stomach lining, tripe, takes hours to cook, and many people believe a bowl of menudo cures a hangover.

Greek avgolemono soup is thickened with lemon juice and what?

Egg and lemon define this soup, which is often thought of as Greek, yet it grew from agristada, a tart egg-thickened sauce Sephardic Jews made in Spain centuries ago.

Traditional cock-a-leekie soup is finished with which dried fruit?

Prunes originally went into the pot as the soup cooked, though some cooks now add them to each bowl at the end, since long simmering can leave them mushy.

Harira, the Moroccan and Algerian soup, is most associated with which observance?

Ramadan fasts in Morocco end each evening with dates and milk or water, then a bowl of harira, the traditional soup for breaking the fast.

Caldo verde, a potato and shredded-cabbage soup served with chouriço, comes from which country?

Portugal's public voted caldo verde one of the nation's Seven Wonders of Gastronomy in 2011, and the soup is traditionally served with broa, a cornbread.