I have been making an inordinate amount of soup since Christmas, so much so that I have decided that now must be considered THE season for soup. It’s not an easy call, because there is a soup for every season, indeed probably for every day, although I think the term “Soup of the Day” was really coined as a catch-all for whatever leftovers needed using! Nothing wrong with that, but let’s just say that “Soup of the Day” most frequently turns out to be just another name for “unspecified vegetables” soup. I also call it “Monday’s soup” because it uses up the leftover vegetables from the Sunday roast.
The etymology of the word “soup” provides insights into the way our eating habits have evolved. It derives from “sop” which originally referred to the bread over which the liquid was poured; “sup” and “supper” share the same root. Bread and soup are inseparable, although nowadays the bread is more often served as an accompaniment rather than an integral part of the soup. We have also moved to associating “sup” with the act of drinking, but you will still find the phrase “et trempez votre soupe” in French recipes, which literally means “moisten your soup” (i.e. your bread) but is mostly translated now as “pour your soup (i.e. liquid) over your bread. This method is still quite common in France and Italy, and whilst I love it, my husband does not, and insists his bread is served on the side. We should remember too that in England “plates” or “tranches” were originally made of bread and passed on to the lower classes to eat after the food had been eaten.
Whilst soup is a universal dish, the French have the distinction of being the masters of soup making. Their formal dining, consisting of several courses, begins with the soup course, and so naturally they have many variations. In Britain, I fancy that soup is more often consumed at lunchtime than at dinner. Personally, I find it too filling to eat as a first course, probably on account of the bread that is consumed with it. But whenever you eat it, soup’s popularity appears undimmed, judging by the number of tins, cartons and plastic containers on offer in the supermarkets. And, if you buy your lunch at a sandwich bar, you are likely to also have soup on offer.
As I made my numerous soups this January, I wondered how many other people still make their own rather than heating something ready-made. I think there is quite a generational divide; retired friends, who might have the time to cook their lunch, do often make soup. One Welsh friend always seems to have Cawl on the go. This is an ancient pot meal, containing a joint of meat on the bone and root vegetables, covered in water, and then slowly cooked for hours (ideal for a slow cooker). Potatoes and shredded leeks are added closer to serving. The joint of meat serves several meals, some of it added to a bowl of Cawl and some perhaps eaten separately. My friend uses this as the basis of meals for a large part of the week. If you are familiar with the French Pot au Feu you will observe the similarities.
The use, or not, of meat stock is one of the key divisions of soup types. The reason behind my increased soup making in January was largely driven by a plentiful supply of stock after Christmas – Turkey Stock, which I reckon to be the most flavourful poultry stock, thanks, I believe, to the longer life it enjoys compared with chicken. I also have a goose for New Year, so there was stock from this too, and then there was the plentiful supply of game birds, principally pheasant and partridge.
One of the soups I made in January, using up more Christmas leftovers, was Celery and Stilton. A friend who ate this asked for the recipe and I warned her that its flavour was very much down to the turkey stock as I knew it never tasted quite as good when I make it with chicken.
From the pure perspective of flavour, I feel that a good meat stock adds a lot to most soups. I have found that even vegetarians, when offered a vegetable soup which you warn them does contain meat stock, mainly seem happy to accept this and even comment on the great flavour. Those soups that are made strictly without meat content, using either a vegetable stock or water, are seldom as popular, although I guess that depends on what lies behind the vegetarian, or vegan, principles. That is not to say that every soup I make uses meat stock – the recipe for Ribollita (Tuscan Bean Soup) that I gave in a previous blog, is one example of an entirely meat free soup which owes its flavour to a bean purée and being given time (at least overnight) for the vegetable flavours to mingle. In the summer, when there are plenty of very fresh vegetables, you may prefer the pure clean taste of these to shine through without being complicated by a meat stock. If you are intending to serve the soup chilled, a meat stock can feel too fatty, but it is always important to refrigerate stocks overnight to remove all traces of fat whenever they are to be used. Gazpacho for example, would never use a meat stock, relying instead on the flavour of perfectly ripe tomatoes. In autumn, I also find that a well-flavoured squash such as Crown Prince, makes a perfectly good soup with just water.
Aside from the flavour, the nutritious element of a soup can be greatly enhanced by the use of a meat stock. Beef tea is the famous British example of this, served in hospitals during the 19th century, as this quote attributed to Florence Nightingale illustrates:
“Beef tea may be chosen as an illustration of great nutrient power in sickness,” noted Florence Nightingale in 1860. “There is a certain reparative quality in it—we do not know what—as there is in tea; but it may be safely given in almost any inflammatory disease…where much nourishment is required.”
In 1870, a Scottish born chemist named John Lawson Johnston, then living in Canada, was tasked by Napoleon with delivering one million cans of beef to troops fighting in the Franco-Prussian War. To overcome the logistical problems this caused, he developed a product which he called “liquid beef” – essentially beef tea. By 1886 the company had branded itself “Bovril” and the drink became firmly embedded in British culture and, alongside more traditional beef tea preparations, became a staple for English soldiers serving in The Great War.
Our understanding of nutrition has grown since these days, in particular our knowledge of the benefits which come from long slow cooking of beef bones so that now we might make bone broth rather than beef tea, which used only the flesh. We should now baulk at the excessively high salt content in Bovril which, together with the chemical preservatives and colourings, mark it out it as an ultra-processed food. Nonetheless, Bovril continues to have a cult following and is especially associated with football stadiums.
A proper bone broth is more intense than a mere stock, it takes about 12 hours to release all of the goodness from the bones. This is not actually so hard to achieve if you have a stove which is on all the time, or, as I sometimes do, a woodburner where you can just leave the pan overnight on the top of the closed down stove once the initial four hours simmering has been completed. Bone broth will deliver optimal nutrition but even a beef stock seems to work wonders when you have a cold. I always use it to make French Onion soup for a cold, the onions also helping to clear congestion.
Before leaving the subject of nutrition, we should remember that it is not only beef bones that deliver. Chicken soup has the alternative name of Jewish Penicillin; someone made some for me when I was ill with Pneumonia and I definitely felt better!
You can buy decent stock (Waitrose chicken and Marks and Spencer’s beef are supposed to be good) but it costs almost as much as buying soup, and that mounts up if you are making soup for several people. There is hardly any cost in the ingredients to make your own stock, and whilst the fuel costs are a consideration, I freeze bones until I have enough to make it in bulk.
But if you really can’t be bothered with homemade stock, may I just caution you against using stock cubes. They are full of additives and the taste can overwhelm the flavours you are trying to foster in your soup. I’d rather water than a stock cube, but think too about soups that incorporate a bone within the ingredients, like the Cawl mentioned earlier, another example being a ham hock in Minestrone or Pea and Ham soup. Or fish soups, where the stock making takes only half an hour and can be done immediately prior to making the soup.
I began by saying that Winter is peak soup making season because of its warming and comforting attributes. As the seasons move on, soup may feature a little less frequently, but not a month goes by when I don’t make some.
I have already mentioned the core ingredients for my winter soup making – root vegetables and dried beans. However, my recipe for this blog moves us into the next phase of the season, when we start to see the first green shoots appearing, e.g. wild garlic, watercress and nettles. All of these make excellent soup when added to a base of leek and potato. Both of these ingredients might be passing their best, beginning to shoot, but they can still be used as a base for these other flavours. And by the time they are over we should be moving on to asparagus!
Green Soups
Soups made with green leaves, be they wild or cultivated, usually have potato as the thickening ingredient. Use the following as a master recipe, which you can vary depending on the leaves to hand: watercress, wild garlic or herbs for example. The principle is the same each time, you make a well flavoured base of onion (and/or leek) and good stock (chicken is my preference). To keep the colour vibrant, the leaves should be cooked only briefly.
Nettle Soup
Makes about 2½ pints
25g/1 oz butter
300g/10 oz potatoes
110g/4 oz onions
110g/4 oz sliced leeks
Salt and pepper
1 litre/1¾ pints chicken stock
150g/5 oz young nettle tops
150ml/¼pint single cream
Peel and chop the onions and potatoes. Both can be weighed before preparation; the potatoes should be cut into dice of approximately half an inch. Clean and slice the leeks, which should then be weighed after slicing.
Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan that has a close-fitting lid. Add the prepared vegetables, season them with salt and pepper and stir to ensure that they are all coated in butter. Then put the lid on the pan and sweat the vegetables over a low heat for 10 minutes so that they soften without colouring.
Add the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer the soup until the potatoes are soft.
Wash the nettle tops. If you are confident that your food processor will chop everything thoroughly you can add them to the soup now, but if you are using a less efficient blender, where the leaves might wind themselves around the blade, it would be safer to chop the nettles first (wear gloves if doing this by hand).
Once the nettles are added to the hot soup they need cooking for only a minute or so. The hot liquid will destroy their sting.
Blend the soup until smooth then return it to the pan together with the single cream. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Reheat to simmering point and serve.
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