98 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.

Which word for an eating place began as the name of a health-giving broth sold in 18th-century Paris?

Restaurant comes from the French verb for 'to restore'. The first Paris houses to use the name, in the 1760s, sold bouillon said to bring back health and vigour, and the label moved from the bowl to the room.

Despite a name meaning 'English soup', Italy's zuppa inglese is actually what kind of dish?

A custard dessert, zuppa inglese layers liqueur-dipped sponge with crema pasticcera, much like a trifle. One theory ties the name to the Italian verb 'inzuppare', to dunk.

Which comedy team starred in the 1933 film Duck Soup, set in the struggling nation of Freedonia?

The Marx Brothers made Duck Soup as their last film for Paramount, with Groucho as Freedonia's new president. Mussolini took it as a personal insult and banned it in Italy, which delighted them.

Which US president's New Deal agencies, such as the CCC and WPA, were nicknamed 'alphabet soup'?

Franklin Roosevelt set up at least 69 offices in the New Deal years, most known by their initials. His former ally Al Smith complained that the government was submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup.

The 'black broth' of boiled meat, blood and vinegar was a notorious dish of which ancient Greek city?

Sparta seasoned its black broth with nothing but salt and vinegar. Plutarch records a visitor from Sybaris sneering that it was no wonder Spartans sought death in war, to escape such a wretched life.

In the Book of Genesis, who trades his birthright to his brother Jacob for a pot of red lentil soup?

Esau gave up his rights as the firstborn for the meal his brother was cooking. The story gave English 'a mess of pottage', a phrase for a shortsighted bargain.

In Pixar's Ratatouille, which new kitchen hand ruins a soup that Remy the rat then secretly rescues?

Linguini is the kitchen's garbage boy, and the repaired soup is served by accident and becomes a hit. Remy later steers him like a marionette by tugging his hair from under the chef's hat.

Which Cantonese soup dumpling has a name meaning 'cloud swallow', for the way it floats in the broth?

Wonton and ordinary dumplings shared one name until the Tang dynasty, when cooks began to tell them apart. The Cantonese spelling pictures the cooked parcels bobbing in the bowl like small clouds.

Which cheese is a usual choice for the bubbling grilled crust on a bowl of French onion soup?

Gruyère melts over a toasted slice floating on the broth. The gratinéed version dates from the mid-19th century at Les Halles, the great Paris market, where it fed porters at dawn and revellers heading home.

In Sweden, yellow pea soup followed by pancakes is traditionally served on which day of the week?

Thursday pea soup is said to date from before the Reformation, when a filling bowl prepared Swedes for the Friday fast. Schools, canteens and the army still keep the habit.

Which hearty Italian vegetable soup, often bulked out with beans and pasta or rice, has no fixed recipe?

Minestrone is the 'big' form of 'minestra', an Italian word for soup that literally means 'that which is served'. Traditional versions leave out meat altogether.

Which smooth French soup is classically based on a strained stock of lobster, crab or crayfish?

Bisque may take its name from the Bay of Biscay. The shellfish are first sautéed in their shells, then simmered in white wine before everything is puréed.

What is the name of the deep, lidded dish, often with two handles, used to serve soup at the table?

Tureen may be a cousin of 'terrine', the French word for a large round earthenware dish. Another story says it honours a French military hero, Marshal Turenne.

Which loaf is most often hollowed out to make an edible bowl for clam chowder?

Sourdough is the usual choice, with dark pumpernickel a common alternative. San Francisco's Boudin Bakery has baked its tangy loaves since 1849, blending Gold Rush miners' starter with French technique.

Which cooked paste of flour and fat is used to thicken gumbo, gravies and many classic sauces?

Roux is usually made from equal weights of flour and fat and can be cooked white, blond or brown. Dark versions are often made with oil, because butter would burn before the colour develops.

Louisiana gumbo is widely thought to be named after a West African word for which vegetable?

Okra is 'gombo' in Bambara and 'ki ngombo' in Kimbundu, and its pods are one of the three classic ways to give the stew body. A rival theory points to 'kombo', a Choctaw word for filé.

Xiaolongbao, the 'soup dumplings' filled with hot broth, are believed to come from which Chinese city?

Shanghai's Nanxiang style is the one best known abroad. The trick is a piece of jellied meat stock wrapped in with the filling, which melts into soup as the basket steams.

Saimin, a noodle soup often topped with sliced Spam and fish cake, was developed in which US state?

Hawaii's plantation-era immigrant workers shaped saimin. A local franchise owner later talked Ray Kroc into selling it, the first time McDonald's had added a local dish to its menu.

The American idiom meaning 'from beginning to end' runs from soup to which final course?

Nuts once marked the close of a formal dinner, just as soup opened it, so the pair bracketed the whole meal. Laurel and Hardy borrowed the phrase for a 1928 comedy short.

Cawl, a hearty broth of lamb and root vegetables, is widely considered the national dish of where?

Wales has cawl recipes going back to the fourteenth century. It was cooked in an iron pot over the fire and eaten with wooden spoons, and in some areas it still comes with a wedge of cheese.

Which member of the onion family is puréed with potatoes to make a classic vichyssoise?

Leek and potato soup is a staple of French home cooking under the name potage Parmentier. Vichyssoise is the same idea made richer and finished with a scattering of chopped chives.

Which grain is the essential ingredient of Scotch broth, simmered with mutton and root vegetables?

Barley goes in last, already soaked, after the meat has simmered for hours. Scotch broth travels well too, and has been sold ready-made in tins for many years.

Which crunchy, bite-sized topping is a classic partner for clam chowder in the American Northeast?

Oyster crackers taste much like saltines and are also served with oyster stew. In Cincinnati they are scattered over the city's distinctive chili instead.

Which spicy coconut-milk noodle soup of Peranakan origin is a favourite in Malaysia and Singapore?

Laksa comes from Peranakan Chinese cooking and changes so much from region to region that its exact birthplace is hard to pin down. Some versions rest on rich coconut milk, others on a fresh, sour base.

Korean haejang-guk is a family of hearty soups whose name promises to chase away what?

A hangover is the target: the name means 'soup to chase a hangover'. One style floats slices of congealed ox blood in the bowl.

In Korea, the seaweed soup miyeok-guk is traditionally eaten to mark which personal occasion?

Birthdays call for miyeok-guk because new mothers eat it for months after delivery, so each bowl honours your own mother. The custom is said to date from people seeing whales eat seaweed after calving.

Goulash takes its name from 'gulyás', the Hungarian word for people in which occupation?

Cattle herders gave the dish its name, and 'gulyás' still means both the cowboy and his soup. Its roots may go back to shepherds' stews of the 10th century.

The 'Borscht Belt' was the nickname of a string of Jewish summer resorts in which American mountains?

The Catskills drew New Yorkers fleeing baking city summers before air conditioning. Variety editor Abel Green coined the nickname as a play on labels like the Bible Belt.

Waterzooi, a rich soup of fish or chicken thickened with egg yolk and cream, comes from which country?

Belgium's waterzooi was first a fish dish. The most accepted theory is that the rivers around Ghent grew too polluted to supply the catch, so chicken took over.

Soup joumou, a squash soup eaten on 1 January to mark freedom from French rule, comes from where?

Haiti's enslaved workers grew the squash but were forbidden to eat it, so when independence came in 1804 they feasted on the soup all day. UNESCO added it to its heritage list in 2021.

Whose American expedition packed 193 pounds of dried 'portable soup' before heading west in 1804?

Lewis and Clark's supply came from a Philadelphia cook, who charged $289.50 for 32 canisters of it. Also called pocket soup or veal glue, it was a forerunner of the bouillon cube.

Which American institution's dining room has served navy-bean soup every day for over a century?

The US Senate tradition has survived almost everything. On September 14, 1943, wartime rationing left the kitchen without enough navy beans to serve it.

In which 1851 novel do two sailors feast on clam and cod chowder at the Try Pots inn on Nantucket?

Moby-Dick gives a whole chapter, titled 'Chowder', to the supper Ishmael and Queequeg eat before finding a ship. The landlady's only question is which of the two kinds they want.

In Irish history, 'taking the soup' meant converting to Protestantism during which event?

The Great Famine saw some Bible societies feed starving children only alongside Protestant lessons. Converts were branded 'soupers', and the rumour alone may have kept hungry Catholics away from soup kitchens.

Tonkotsu ramen, a speciality of Japan's Kyushu island, gets its rich broth from long simmering of what?

Pork bones are exactly what 'tonkotsu' means in Japanese. A street-stall vendor in Kurume invented the style in 1937, and the pot can bubble for as long as eighteen hours.

Which sour fruit is the souring agent most often associated with sinigang, the savoury Filipino soup?

Tamarind gives sinigang its sharp bite, though cooks also sour the pot with unripe mango or vinegar. The dish's name is sometimes put into English simply as 'sour broth'.

Ajoblanco, a cold Andalusian soup usually served with grapes, is built on which crushed ingredient?

Almonds are pounded with olive oil, water and sometimes vinegar for ajoblanco, a speciality of Granada and Málaga.

Pozole, the Mexican soup garnished with radishes, lettuce and lime, always includes which form of maize?

Hominy in broth is the one constant of pozole, whether the bowl is the plain white style or coloured with a green or red sauce. The kernels are maize soaked in an alkaline solution, which loosens the hulls.

John T. Dorrance, the American who made condensed soup commercially viable, was trained in which science?

Chemistry took him from MIT to a doctorate at Göttingen. By taking out water he shrank the can and the shipping bill, and a tin that had cost 34 cents sold for 10.

Which Swiss inventor of precooked soups gave his name to a seasoning sauce and a bouillon-cube brand?

Julius Maggi first sold quick-cooking legume flours meant to feed factory workers better. His firm put industrially made bouillon cubes on sale in 1908, two years ahead of Oxo.

Which American-born scientist devised a cheap, nourishing soup around 1800 to feed the poor of Munich?

Count Rumford, born Benjamin Thompson in Massachusetts, was advising the Elector of Bavaria when he designed the ration. He is often credited with establishing the first real soup kitchen.

On a classical French menu, a soup labelled 'Crécy' is made mainly from which vegetable?

Carrots reputed to be the best-flavoured in France came from Crécy, so the name stuck to the soup, though two towns called Crécy claim the honour. French cooks typically simmer it with a little rice.

Russian okroshka is a cold soup of chopped vegetables and meat classically doused in which drink?

Kvass, a barely alcoholic drink brewed from black or rye loaves, is the classic choice. Versions made with dairy or fizzy water only appeared in Soviet times.

Mohinga, a catfish and noodle soup traditionally eaten at breakfast, is the national dish of which country?

Myanmar wakes up to mohinga, though these days it is eaten at any hour. Lemongrass, ginger and fish sauce flavour the pot, which gets its body from gram flour or crushed toasted rice.

Ajiaco, a chicken soup with three kinds of potato and the herb guascas, is a signature of which capital?

Bogotá calls its version ajiaco santafereño. Cuba and Peru have soups of the same name, each made to its own recipe.

West African egusi soup takes its name from which dried and ground thickening ingredient?

Melon seeds, rich in protein, are dried and ground to give the soup its body. The word egusi covers both the seeds and the soup made from them.

Which Japanese comedy, billed as the first 'ramen Western', follows a widow perfecting her noodle shop?

Tampopo means 'dandelion', the name of the widowed shop owner who asks a passing truck driver to coach her. The publicity tag was a play on the spaghetti Western.

Ecuador's Good Friday soup fanesca is made with a dozen kinds of beans and grains, representing whom?

The apostles are the beans and grains, and the salt cod simmered in milk stands for Jesus himself. The recipe skips red meat because of the old Catholic rule for Holy Week.

Ribollita, a Tuscan soup of cannellini beans and dark kale, has a name that literally means what?

Reboiled is the literal meaning, because cooks often made it from leftovers warmed through again. Like most Tuscan cooking, it began as peasant food built on cheap vegetables.

Which company's instant onion soup mix, stirred into sour cream, made the 1950s party hit California dip?

Lipton promoted the recipe on a television talent show in 1955, a year after an unknown Los Angeles cook came up with it. For a while the snack was known as Lipton California Dip.