The History Of Soup | Calm Bedtime Reading

Relax with this calm bedtime reading designed to help you drift into restful sleep and ease insomnia. In this gentle episode, discover the fascinating history of soup — from ancient broths to modern comfort bowls — while your mind unwinds. Benjamin’s soothing narration blends education and relaxation, offering a peaceful space for learning without whispering or hypnosis. It’s the perfect way to calm your thoughts, ease anxiety, and settle into a deep, refreshing night’s rest. Press play, close your eyes, and drift off as you learn about the world’s favorite warm meal. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about 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 main generic term for liquid savory dishes.

Others include broth,

Dish,

Consommé,

Pottage,

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 savory,

Sweet soups are familiar in some parts of Europe.

Soups have been made since prehistoric times and have evolved over the centuries.

The first soups were made from grains and herbs.

Later,

Legumes,

Other vegetables,

Meat,

Or fish were added.

Originally,

Sops referred to pieces of bread covered with savory 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 banquets as well as in peasant homes.

Some soups have been the primary source of nourishment for poor people in many places.

In times of hardship,

Soup kitchens have provided sustenance for the hungry.

Some soups are found in recognizably similar forms in the cuisines of many countries and regions.

Chicken soups and oxtail soups are known around the world.

Others remain almost entirely exclusive to their region of origin.

The term soup,

Or words like it,

Can be found in many languages.

According to the Oxford Companion to Food,

Soup is the most general of the terms which apply to liquid savory dishes.

Other terms embraced by soup include broth,

Bisque,

Bouillon,

Consommé,

Pottage,

And many more.

According to the lexicographer John Ido,

The etymological idea underlying the word soup is that of soaking.

In his 2012 The Diner's Dictionary,

Ido writes that the word dates back to an unrecorded post-classical Latin verb,

Suppare,

To soak,

Which was derived from the prehistoric Germanic root soup,

Which also produced the English sap and supper.

The term passed into Old French as soupe,

Meaning a piece of bread soaked in liquid,

And by extension,

Broth poured onto bread.

The earliest recorded use in English of soupe 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 gruyere floating on traditional French onion soup,

But also in bread-based soups including the German schwarzbrotsuppe,

Black bread soup,

The Russian okroska,

And the Italian papa al pomodoro,

Tomato pulp.

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française records the term soup in French use from the 12th century,

But adds that it is probably earlier.

The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of the word in English in the 14th century.

The first known cookery book in English,

The form of curry circa 1390,

Refers to several broths,

But not to soups.

The Oxford Companion to Food,

O.

C.

F.

,

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 on food and cooking,

Commenting that they can be so similar that soups may only be distinguished as less intensely flavored,

Permitting them to be eaten as a food in themselves.

Not an accent.

Before the invention of boiling and water,

Cooking was limited to simple heating and roasting.

The making of soup,

Or something akin,

Has been dated by some writers back to the Upper Paleolithic,

Between 50,

000 and 12,

000 years ago.

Some archaeologists conjecture that early humans employed hides and water-tied baskets to boil liquids.

According to a study by the academic Gerrit C.

Van Dyck,

The first soup may have been made by Neanderthals,

Boiling animal bones and drinking the broth.

Archaeological evidence for bone broth has been found in sites of the Middle Ages,

From Egypt to China.

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.

Methods of making soup evolved from one culture to another.

The first soups were made from grains and herbs.

Later,

Peas,

Beans,

Other vegetables,

Pasta,

Meat,

Or fish were added.

In her 2010 work,

Soup,

A Global History,

Janet Clarkson writes that the ancient Romans had a variety of soups.

De Re Coquinaria,

On the subject of cooking,

A collection of Roman recipes compiled in the 4th or 5th century from earlier manuscripts,

Gives details of numerous ingredients,

Mostly vegetable.

In European and Arab cuisines,

Soups continue to feature after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Clarkson writes that the earliest known German cookery book,

The Buch von Gute Spieße,

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 15th century French book,

Dufet de Cuisine,

From the Kitchen,

Has many recipes for pottages and sops,

Including several regional variants.

During the 17th 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 Accomplished Cook,

1660.

Clarkson comments that about a fifth of May's recipes are for soups of one kind or another.

The Huang Dine Jing,

A Chinese medical text,

Describes the preparation of soups and clear liquids by steaming rice,

And recommends soups as medicine.

In the 18th 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.

In the early 19th century,

A new style of dining became fashionable in Europe and elsewhere,

Service à la rousse,

Russian-style service.

Dishes were served one at a time,

Usually beginning with soup.

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 poor 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 16th century.

From the late 18th century,

Soup kitchens were set up in Germany,

France,

England,

And elsewhere.

In the 1840s,

The chef Alexis Sawyer 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.

In the same period,

The Salvation Army ran similar operations elsewhere in the U.

S.

And in Canada,

Australia,

And Britain.

In Asian countries,

Soup became a familiar breakfast dish,

But has not,

According to Clarkson,

Done so in the West.

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 soybean paste.

Clarkson writes,

Miso soup is the traditional breakfast soup in the ordinary home,

And the traditional end to a formal banquet.

Ramen,

A noodle soup popular in Japan and latterly internationally,

Is documented only from the second half of the 19th century.

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 the equal of oxtail soup.

Indian cuisine includes rasam,

Sometimes called pepper water,

A thin spicy soup typically made with lentils,

Tomatoes,

And seasonings,

Including tamarind,

Pepper,

And chilies.

The Thai cuisine geng chud are soups.

The most popular are tom yum kung,

Made with prawns,

And tom kha gai,

Made with galangal.

Chicken and coconut milk.

Pho is a Vietnamese soup usually made from beef stock and spices with noodles,

And thinly sliced beef or chicken added.

In Filipino cookery,

Sinigang is a soup made with meat,

Shrimp,

Or fish,

And flavored with a sour ingredient,

Such as tamarind or guava.

Also from the Philippines is kalereta,

A goat soup.

The soups of Indonesia include soto ayam,

Chicken,

Sop udang,

Shrimp with rice vermicelli,

And sop kepiting,

Crab.

Karudia is a soup served in the Maldives,

With chunks of tuna in it.

Two soups from Armenia are a cucumber and yogurt soup called jajik and bajbash,

Containing lamb and fruit.

Dushbara is a dumpling soup from Azerbaijan.

Tibetan cooking includes samsug,

Made from grains,

Butter,

Soy,

And cheese.

An Iranian summer soup,

Mastokir,

Is made with yogurt,

Cucumber,

And mint.

Turkish kelepaca is made from the meat from animal heads and feet.

Tahana,

One of the oldest traditional Turkish soups,

Is made by mixing and fermenting yogurt,

Cereal flours,

And a variety of cooked vegetables,

Producing a soup with a sour and acidic tang,

And a yeasty flavor.

Also from Turkey is the yayla çorbası,

A yogurt soup with rice or barley.

Like chicken soup,

It has curative properties ascribed to it by some.

From the 16th century onwards,

Paris was known for its street vendors selling soup.

And in mid-19th century Paris,

Léal,

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 au gratin.

This gratinée de zahle transcended class distinctions,

Becoming the breakfast of the four de zahle,

The workers responsible for transporting the goods,

And a restorative for the party people leaving the cabarets of Paris late at night.

The many cuisines of Europe have made a range of soups.

Among the soups of Italy are minestrone,

Zuppa pavese,

And stracciatella,

Respectively a vegetable broth,

Consomé from poached eggs,

And a meat broth with eggs and cheese.

From Belgium,

There are portage les joies,

A pea and bean soup,

And soupe chanchesse,

A vegetable soup with fine vermicelli and milk.

Bulgarian cuisine includes tarator,

A cold yogurt and cucumber soup.

Dutch soups include aardensoep,

A split pea soup,

And brown and bonen soup.

A brown bean soup eaten with rye bread and bacon.

A soup from the Faroe Islands is ragiud,

Made with dried mutton.

Erben zuppa mit schweinsorten is a German split pea soup with pig's ear.

Ziviasuppe,

A Latvian fish soup,

Incorporates whole pieces of cooked fish with potato.

The Finnish kesekero is a light summer soup of seasonal vegetables,

Cooked in milk and water.

The Swedish trødsoppa is a meat and vegetable soup.

The Norwegian blomkålpuree is a cauliflower soup with egg yolks and cream.

Gehek from Luxembourg is made with pork offal,

And finished with prunes soaked in local white wine.

Maltese soups include sapat al armla,

Widow's soup,

Made with green and white vegetables,

And garnished with a poached egg and cheese.

And oljota,

A light fish soup flavored with garlic and marjoram.

Two soups from Poland are chłodnik,

A crayfish and beetroot soup served chilled,

And grokówka,

Yellow pea soup with barley.

Portuguese soups include conja,

Chicken,

And caldoverje,

Potato and cabbage.

Kolonsking,

Smoked haddock soup and nettle soup,

Are of Scottish origin.

A Welsh soup,

Kál,

Is typically made with lamb or beef together with vegetables,

Including potatoes,

Swedes,

And carrots.

Slovenian cuisine includes juha,

A meat and vegetable soup.

Russian soups include shki,

Cabbage soup,

Slyanka,

Vegetable soup with meat or fish,

Raselnik,

Pickled cucumber soup,

And uka,

Fish soup.

Arab shorba typically contains meat and oats.

Egyptian food includes melkhiya,

A soup of jute leaves and mead.

The Moroccan harira contains chickpeas,

Meat,

And rice.

In Nigeria,

According to Davidson,

Soupy stews or stew-like soups are popular.

He gives as examples a goosey soup often made with offal,

Palm oil,

Carob,

Lemon basil,

And a goosey 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.

In A Safari of African Cooking,

1971,

Bill O'Doherty also highlights goat soup from Liberia.

Other Nigerian soups include the spinach-based soup efo.

A study in 2025 reported that despite their nutritional richness and cultural importance,

Traditional soups were declining in popularity,

Particularly among younger generations and in urban areas.

Soups from other parts of Africa include cheruba,

A lamb and vegetable soup with lima beans and chickpeas from North Africa.

A West African specialty is groundnut soup.

A benkwan from West Africa is a soup of crab meat,

Pulped palm nuts,

And lamb.

East African cuisine includes bean soup with tomato,

Onion,

Pepper,

And curry powder.

Supuya papaya 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 curd snook head soup.

A 2014 study records a Ghanaian saying,

I haven't eaten if I don't have my soup and fufu,

A dough of pounded cocoa yam and cassava.

The soup is typically based on okra.

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.

In the Western cuisine of the 20th and 21st centuries,

There have been and are numerous soups.

Auguste Escoffier divided them into two main types.

Clear soups,

Which include plain and garnished consommé,

Thick soups,

Which comprise the purees,

Velouté,

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 garbura or gratinade soups.

But important dinners,

By this I mean rich dinners,

Only the first two classes are recognized.

Louis Saulnier's Le Repertoire de la Cuisine,

First published in 1914,

Contained six pages of details of potages,

Clear soups,

Two pages on soups moistened with water,

Milk,

Or thin white stock,

Eight pages on velouté,

Soups thickened with egg yolks,

And crème,

Thickened with double cream,

As well as a further three pages on 53 foreign soups.

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 Rundle 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 19th century,

The Royal Navy had been victualing its ships with portable soup for some years.

Recipes were published under many names.

Clarkson lists veal glue,

Cake soup,

Cake gravy,

Broth cakes,

Solid soup,

Portmanteau potage,

Pocket soup,

Carry soup,

And soup always in readiness.

In 1810,

Peter Durand,

An English inventor,

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 lids 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 homemade versions.

Canning made soup readily available,

Easily transportable,

Long-lasting,

And convenient.

In 1897,

Heinz's rival Campbell's introduced condensed canned soups to be diluted with water to produce double the volume.

According to the food historian Ray Tannehill,

Tomato soup was not popular in the U.

S.

Or Britain until Campbell's began marketing it.

Reviews

The bread I sopped up my soup with for supper was home made. Thanks Ben for lulling us to sleep with the ultimate comfort food!

Who knew soup 🥣 was so complex?? 🤷🏻‍♀️not me - because I keep falling asleep 😴 🤭🙏🏼🙏🏼thank you Ben for your soothing voice!!