50 Fun Facts About Soup

The word 'soup' comes from a root meaning what?

The same root gives English 'sup' and 'supper'. Originally the word described bread soaked in liquid rather than the liquid itself.

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

Broth poured over bread was the whole dish. French onion soup with its raft of baguette is a direct survivor.

How did Escoffier divide soups?

Consommés fall on one side; purées, veloutés and creams on the other. The scheme still underpins professional kitchens.

Which American company introduced condensed canned soup in 1897?

Removing half the water doubled the volume once the customer added it back. The idea reshaped the American store cupboard.

Who worked out how to condense soup commercially in 1897?

He was a chemist with degrees from MIT and Göttingen. He halved the heaviest ingredient in the can: water.

Where did the red and white colour scheme on cans come from?

An executive admired the crisp carnelian red of Cornell's kit in 1898. The design has barely changed since.

Which artist made silkscreens of soup cans in 1962?

He returned to the subject on and off for two decades. The cans became one of the defining images of pop art.

In which year was the company founded?

A fruit merchant and a partner started it in New Jersey. The condensed soup came almost thirty years later.

Where can the origins of ramen be traced to?

It arrived in the late 19th century from southern Chinese noodle cooking. The name was borrowed from a northern Chinese dish it does not descend from.

What gives ramen noodles their yellow colour and springy bite?

The mineral water changes how the wheat proteins behave. Without it the noodles would be ordinary pasta.

Who invented instant noodles in 1958?

The invention took ramen worldwide and made it student food everywhere. A museum in Osaka is devoted to it.

Which is the oldest of the ramen seasoning styles?

It is built on salt, cooking alcohols and umami ingredients. The miso style only reached national prominence around 1965.

Which country is pho from?

It appeared in the north of the country around 1900. The broth is simmered with charred onion and ginger for hours.

Which kind of noodle goes into pho?

Their width varies by region. The broth is simmered with bones, charred onion, charred ginger and spices.

How does southern Vietnamese pho differ from the northern version?

The south piles on bean sprouts, chilli, hoisin and herbs. The north keeps the broth clear and the garnishes minimal.

Which vegetable gives borscht its colour?

The soup can be served hot or cold. UNESCO listed the Ukrainian tradition of cooking it in 2022.

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

The listing came in 2022, shortly after the invasion. The soup predates all the modern arguments about it by centuries.

Before its familiar red vegetable, what plant was borscht originally made from?

The pickled stems, leaves and umbels were fermented. The modern red version is a much later development.

Gazpacho is served at what temperature?

It is a summer dish from southern Spain and Portugal.

When were tomatoes added to gazpacho?

The red version everyone knows is comparatively modern. Older recipes rely on bread, oil, vinegar and garlic.

Which ingredient thickens a traditional gazpacho?

Bread, oil and vinegar form the base, with tomato, cucumber, pepper and garlic. It was originally food for farm labourers.

Which French port is bouillabaisse from?

The name comes from two Provençal verbs meaning to boil and to reduce the heat. It began as a fisherman's dish made from unsellable rockfish.

What does the name 'bouillabaisse' literally describe?

The instruction is the recipe. Traditional versions require at least three kinds of fish.

What is rouille, served with bouillabaisse?

It goes on grilled slices of bread and floats on the broth. Cayenne gives it the rusty colour its name refers to.

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

The tomato version is a long-running culinary insult in New England. Both are properly full of clams and potato.

The word 'chowder' may come from which French word?

The first chowders were probably cooked in exactly such a pot. Another candidate is a French dish called chaudrée.

According to Alexandre Dumas, how did onion soup reach the French royal court?

Louis XV's father-in-law Stanislas was the enthusiast. Onions had until then been regarded as peasant food.

Which stock is normally used in French onion soup?

The onions are cooked slowly in butter or oil until golden first. Grated cheese under a grill finishes the dish.

How was onion soup regarded socially before the 18th century?

Onions were cheap, plentiful and unfashionable. A Polish king's enthusiasm changed that at Versailles.

What are the two basic components of miso soup?

The stock is usually made from seaweed, bonito flakes, dried sardines or dried shiitake. Tofu and wakame are the classic additions.

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

Niboshi sardines, katsuobushi bonito shavings and dried shiitake do the same job. The stock takes minutes rather than hours.

Which meal does miso soup traditionally anchor in Japan?

Miso soup and white rice are its central dishes. The wider structure is called one soup, three dishes.

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

The birds build them on cave walls, and now in purpose-built concrete houses. The white grade can fetch thousands of dollars a kilogram.

How much can a kilogram of red bird's nest fetch?

White nests fetch up to $2,800 a kilogram. Prices depend heavily on grading.

Where were edible nests traditionally harvested?

Gomantong and Niah were the famous sites. Since the late 1990s purpose-built nesting houses have largely replaced them.

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

British cooks added chicken, mutton and flour to the original. It became a fixture of Anglo-Indian cookbooks in the 19th century.

What is a consommé?

The French word originally meant consumed or accomplished. Clarifying it is one of the classic tests of a cook.

What is used to clarify a consommé?

The dispersed globules act as a magnet for cloudy particles and rise to the surface. What is left below is crystal clear.

Roughly how many sharks are killed each year for their fins, according to Humane Society International?

Finning takes the fins and discards the rest of the animal. The soup was a Ming dynasty banquet dish long before it became a conservation issue.

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

Qing dynasty writing already treats it as a formal banquet standard. Conservation campaigns have cut demand sharply in recent years.

In the Thai name tom yum, what does the word 'tom' refer to?

'Yam' means mixed. The two main styles are tom yam nam khon, the creamy version, and tom yam nam sai, the clear one.

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

Gumbo is usually classified by thickener: okra or filé. It is added after the pot comes off the heat, and New Orleans gumbo is Louisiana's official state cuisine.

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

An authentic version uses finnan haddie with potatoes and onions. It is a common starter at formal Scottish dinners, especially in the northeast.

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

Despite its French name, the leek-and-potato soup is a 20th-century American creation, served cold and garnished with chopped chives.

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

The tripe is simmered in broth and seasoned with hominy, lime, onions and oregano. The Filipino dish of the same name uses none of those.

Greek avgolemono soup is thickened with lemon juice and what?

The name literally means egg-lemon. Magiritsa, a lamb-offal version, is eaten to break the fast at the end of Great Lent.

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

Though called Scotland's national soup, it probably began as a French chicken-and-onion soup; the Scots swapped in leeks by the late 16th century.

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

It is eaten as a starter or on its own to break the fast, though it can be made year-round. Its origin is disputed between Morocco and western Algeria.

Goulash's defining spice, paprika, was only introduced to Europe in which century?

Hungarian shepherds were eating goulash-style stews as early as the 10th century, sun-drying the meat and carrying it in bags made from sheep's stomachs.

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

The name means green broth. It is eaten at weddings and birthdays with slices of broa, a cornbread, for dipping.