23.1 Kinds of soup

Clear, thick, and the rest

Sort soups by how they are made and how they look, and most fall into one of two families. Clear soups are broths, cooked from fish, vegetables, meat, poultry or game, and consommés, which are broths with every bit of cloudiness taken out. Broth is also called bouillon. Thick soups are cream soups and purée soups.

Some well-loved soups belong to neither family. Bisques, chowders and cold soups such as gazpacho or a fruit soup each have a method of their own, or borrow from both families at once.

What makes a good soup

A soup is judged on three things: flavor, appearance and texture.

• Flavor. It should taste full, never sour or stale. Every ingredient adds to the whole, and no single one shouts over the rest.
• Appearance. A consommé must be crystal clear. Vegetables in a vegetable soup should keep a bright color and never turn gray. Garnish pieces should be neat and all the same size and shape.
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• Texture. A soup meant to be smooth must have no lumps at all. Where soft and crisp pieces are meant to play against each other, stop cooking before everything goes soft.

How Escoffier sorted soups

In 1903 the French chef Auguste Escoffier set out his kinds of soup in Le Guide Culinaire. He named far more groups than kitchens use now:

• Clear soups: consommés with a light garnish that suits them.
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• Purées: starchy vegetables, thickened with potato, rice or soft breadcrumbs.
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• Cullises: a base of poultry, game or fish. They were thickened with lentils, with rice, with espagnole sauce, or with bread that had soaked in salted water at the boil.
• Bisques: shellfish cooked with mirepoix, thickened with rice.
• Veloutés: built on velouté sauce and finished with a liaison.
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• Cream soups: built on béchamel and finished with heavy cream.
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• Special soups: any that follow neither the velouté nor the cream method.
• Vegetable soups, mostly of the simple country kind, and soups from abroad that had become common enough to cook.

Since then, diners have grown more careful about health and kitchens have changed how they run, so many of these lines have faded or gone. Today both vegetable soups and consommés start from a stock or a broth. Most cream soups now start from velouté and are finished with milk or cream instead of a liaison. Purées and bisques, though, are still made much as Escoffier made them.

Broths

Every clear soup begins as a stock or a broth. A broth can be served as it is, used as the base of another soup, or cleared into a consommé.

For more flavor, cook the broth in stock instead of water, and choose meat from the shank, neck or shoulder, or the flesh of older poultry. The right heat, regular skimming and careful straining keep it clear.

• Get the main ingredient ready. Brown the meat, and brown or sweat the vegetables if the recipe needs it.
• Put everything in a stockpot and cover it with cold water or stock. Add a bouquet garni or a sachet if you want one.
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• Heat it slowly to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer. Skim it now and then, and keep going until the meat is tender and the flavor is full.
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• Line a china cap strainer with damp cheesecloth and strain the broth through it. Move the solids as little as you can, so the broth stays clear.
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• Either cool and store it the way you would a stock, or bring it to a boil, garnish it, and keep it hot for service.

Vegetable soups made on broth

A broth can simply carry a garnish of vegetables or meat. A broth-based vegetable soup goes further: the vegetables, and any meat, cook in the broth itself, and give it flavor, body and texture. It can hold a single vegetable, as onion soup does, or a dozen, as a hearty minestrone does.

Timing is the skill. Each ingredient goes in at its own moment, so that all of them are done together: cooked long enough to give up flavor and soften, but not so long that they turn to mush and lose their shape. These soups are never as clear as a plain broth, so the cutting matters. Use neat, even pieces: small dice, julienne, batonnet or paysanne. see chapter 4: The classic cuts and their sizes

• Sweat the slow-cooking vegetables in butter or fat.
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• Pour in the stock or broth and bring it to a simmer.
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• Tie the seasonings in a sachet, for example garlic, bay leaves, parsley stems, dried thyme and crushed peppercorns, and put it in early enough to flavor the soup.
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• Add the other ingredients in order of how long each takes to cook.
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• Simmer until the flavors come together.
• If it is not being served now, cool it and put it in the refrigerator.
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• Right before service, add any garnish that was cooked on its own or needs no cooking.

Consommé

A good consommé tastes richly of its main ingredient. Beef and game consommés are dark; poultry ones run from golden to light amber. It has real body, because it holds a lot of gelatin, and it shows no fat and no haze at all. The clearing adds a little flavor, but a consommé can never be better than the stock it started from.

The clearing uses a clearmeat, also called a clarification. It holds:

• egg whites
• ground fish, poultry or meat
• mirepoix with herbs and spices
• something acidic, usually tomato, lemon juice or wine

An oignon brûlé, a charred onion, is often added for flavor and color. The stock must be cold and free of fat. As the mix heats slowly, the protein in the egg whites and meat (albumen) sets and grabs the floating particles. The set mass rises and forms a crust called the raft, which goes on giving flavor as it simmers. see chapter 7: Eggs

• Mix the clearmeat ingredients in a stockpot. A pot fitted with a spigot, a small tap, makes the final straining much easier.
• Stir in the cold stock or broth.
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• Over medium heat, bring it slowly to a simmer, stirring from time to time.
• When the raft forms, open a hole in its center so the liquid can bubble up through it.
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• Simmer until the flavor is full, about 1 to 1½ hours.
• Strain through several layers of cheesecloth and take off all the fat.
• If it is for later, chill it; once it is cold, lift away the fat that has set on top. If small dots of fat show after reheating, blot them up with a scrap of paper towel.

• Chill and degrease the consommé.
• Beat four egg whites lightly for each gallon (4 liters) and mix them into the cold liquid.
• Bring it slowly to a simmer, stirring only until the whites begin to set.
• When they have set, strain it with care.

Thick soups: cream and purée

As a rule, a cream soup is thickened with roux or another starch, and a purée soup is thickened by its own main ingredient, puréed. The two overlap: some purées are finished with cream, or get a little roux.

Cream soups are made in four steps:

• Simmer the main ingredient, say broccoli for cream of broccoli, with seasonings in white stock or a thin velouté.
• Purée and strain the soup.
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• Set its thickness.
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• Add the cream last.

Classic cooking often used a thin béchamel as the base, and it can stand in for velouté in many recipes.

Hard vegetables such as celery or squash are sweated first in butter, kept pale, and only then does the liquid go in. Soft and leafy ones such as spinach, corn, broccoli or asparagus go in once the liquid is boiling. Because the soup will be puréed, cook everything until it is soft enough to push easily through a food mill.

• Never pour cold milk or cream into hot soup. Bring it to a simmer first.
• Add it as close to service as you can.
• Once it is in, do not let the soup boil.
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• Finish with béchamel or cream sauce instead of plain milk or cream: the roux or other starch in it helps stop curdling.

Purée soups are hearty. Starchy vegetables or legumes cook in stock or broth, and then all or part of the pot is puréed to thicken it. Like a cream soup, a purée is a main ingredient cooked in liquid and then puréed. Unlike one, it usually gets no added starch: the main ingredient's own starch does the thickening. A purée is also usually coarser and is often left unstrained. If you finish it with cream, follow the same rules as for a cream soup.

Purées can be made from beans, dried or fresh, including lentils, navy beans and peas, or from vegetables such as cauliflower, celery root, turnips and potatoes. Diced potato or rice is often added to help a vegetable purée thicken. see chapter 13: Sort, wash and soak

Fixing the thickness. Cream and purée soups thicken as they sit in the refrigerator. When you reheat a portion, loosen it with hot stock, broth, water or milk. If a soup is too thin, add roux, beurre manié, or cornstarch stirred into cool stock. Use only a little, and simmer for a few minutes so the soup loses any raw starch taste. For a cream soup that also needs more richness, use a liaison, and never let the soup boil after it goes in, or it may curdle. see chapter 7: Thickeners and gelling agents compared

Bisques, chowders and cold soups

Bisques were first shellfish soups thickened with cooked rice. Today most are made from shrimp, lobster or crayfish by mixing the cream and purée methods, with roux in place of rice because it holds steadier and gives a more even texture. The shells give much of the flavor: they simmer in the liquid, are puréed with the mirepoix, go back into the pot, and are strained out after more cooking. That puréeing also gives a bisque its body and its slightly grainy feel. Cream goes in as for a cream soup, butter can go in for more richness, and the garnish is diced meat of the same shellfish.

Chowders are tied in most minds to the eastern United States, with its plentiful clams and fish, but they began in France. The word comes from a Breton phrase, faire chaudière, meaning to make a fish stew in a cauldron. French settlers probably carried the dish to Nova Scotia, and from there it reached New England. A chowder is hearty, full of chunks of its main ingredients, and almost always has diced potato. Most contain milk or cream; Manhattan clam chowder is the best-known exception. A few are thin, but most are thickened with roux. They are made much like a cream soup, except that nothing is puréed or strained before the cream goes in.

Cold soups are hard to sort, since so many use unusual or mixed methods. One simple split is between those that are cooked and those that are not.

• Cooked cold soups. Many are just a hot soup served chilled; consommé madrilène and consommé Portuguese are cooked hot and served cold. Others start from fruit juice, often apple, grape or orange, thickened with cornstarch or arrowroot and with puréed fruit. Wine may replace some of the juice. Spices that suit fruit, such as cinnamon and ginger, are common, as is lemon or lime juice for sharpness. Crème fraîche, yogurt or sour cream adds richness, in the soup or on top. Cold fruit soups now show up on dessert menus.
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• Uncooked cold soups. These get their thickness, body and flavor from puréed fruit or vegetables alone. A little cold stock can adjust the thickness, and cream, sour cream or crème fraîche can enrich them.
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Garnishing

A garnish can be as plain as a pinch of chopped parsley on a cream soup or as grand as tiny pastry puffs filled with foie gras floating in a consommé. Some soups are so full of good things, like the chicken and vegetables in chicken vegetable soup, that they need nothing more. In others the garnish names the soup: add cooked barley and diced beef to a beef broth and it becomes beef barley soup.

A few classic consommés have set garnishes, but most soups are garnished from the chef's ideas and what the kitchen has on hand. The rules are short:

• Make it look good.
• Cut meat and vegetables neatly, to one suitable shape and size. In a consommé this matters most, since a clear liquid shows every cut, good or bad.
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• Choose a flavor and texture that suit the soup.
• Cook starches and vegetables apart, reheat them, and put them in the bowl before the hot soup. Cooked in the soup, they can cloud or thicken it and change its taste, texture and seasoning.
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• Cook a garnish only until it is done. Meat and poultry should be tender yet whole, vegetables firm, and pasta and rice still distinct. Keep them on the side and add them at the last minute so they do not overcook.

Some garnishes are there for crunch as much as for taste or looks: croutons, oyster crackers, crisp bacon crumbled over a cream soup, or a clear broth with diced meat in it. Good matches by kind of soup:

• Clear soups: julienne strips of whatever meat, poultry, fish or vegetable gives the broth its main flavor; evenly cut vegetables; small pasta such as flat noodles, tiny ravioli or tortellini; barley, gnocchi, spaetzle, quenelles, wild or white rice, croutons, won tons, crêpes or tortillas.
• Cream soups, hot or cold: croutons, grated cheese, crème fraîche or sour cream, slivered almonds that have been toasted, or puff pastry crescents (fleurons). A cream of vegetable soup usually gets slices or florets of its own vegetable.
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• Purée soups: julienne of poultry or ham, sliced sausage, croutons, grated cheese or bacon bits.
• Any soup: parsley, watercress, edible flowers, snipped chives, or any fresh herbs chopped fine.
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Making soup ahead, and serving it

Most soups can be made in advance and reheated for service. For the best freshness, heat small batches through the service rather than one big pot.

Clear soups reheat easily, since they hardly ever scorch. If the garnish is already in, take care it does not overcook. Lift every trace of fat off a consommé before you reheat it.

Thick soups are harder. They keep longer, with less risk of spoiling, if you cool and refrigerate them as a base, before any milk or cream goes in. At service, warm the base slowly in a heavy pot over low heat, stirring often so it does not catch. Then finish it with boiling milk or cream, a light béchamel or a liaison, taste it, and correct the seasoning. see chapter 6: When to add them

Cooling. A large pot of soup, 4 liters (1 gallon) or more, can take a day or longer to get down to 4°C (40°F) in a cooler. Cooked food must fall from 60°C to 20°C within two hours, and then to 4°C within the next four (140°F, 68°F and 40°F). Ways to get soup there:

• Pour it into shallow pans, no more than 5 cm (2 in.) deep, and do not stack the pans.
• Leave it loosely covered or uncovered while it cools; a tight lid holds the heat in. Cover it tightly once it is cold.
• Stand the container in a bath of ice and water and stir it, or use cooling wands.
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• Use stainless steel or aluminum containers, which pass heat well, not plastic, which does not.
• Use ice as one of the soup's ingredients.

Reheating and holding. Soup is a potentially hazardous food, and even a dry soup mix becomes one once water is added. The rules: see chapter 2: Heat: cooling, holding and reheating

• Food being reheated must reach 74°C (165°F) and stay there for 15 seconds or more, and on a stove or in an oven it must get there within two hours.
• Never reheat in a hot-holding unit; it is not built for that.
• Hold hot food at 60°C (140°F) or above.
• Reheat leftovers only once, and throw out any that have been reheated already.
• Date anything held in the cooler more than a day; as a rule, such food is discarded once three days pass without it being used.
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Serving temperature. A hot soup goes out hot, a cold one cold. A hot clear soup is at its best near boiling, 210°F (99°C), and a hot cream soup a little lower, 190°F to 200°F (88°C to 93°C). Cold food, cold soups included, goes out at 4°C (40°F) or colder, and a cold soup is sometimes served in a dish set in ice.