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Soup is a savoury liquid food that is made by boiling ingredients, such as meat, vegetables and beans in stock or hot water, until the flavor is extracted, forming a broth. Boiling was not a common cooking technique until the invention of waterproof containers about 5,000 years ago, so soups presumably were little-known before that time.
Over the centuries, the terms gruel and potage have become separated from broth and stock (and their refinement, consommé). The language may have shifted over time, but the modern definitions of soup and stew were established in the 18th century: soups usually are more liquid; stews are thicker, containing more solid ingredients. Stews are cooked in covered containers for longer periods of time, at a gentle boil with less water and at a lower heat.
Traditionally, soups are classified into two broad groups: clear soups and thick soups. The established French classifications of clear soups are bouillon and consommé. Thick soups are classified depending upon the type of thickening agent used: purées are vegetable soups thickened with starch; bisques are made from puréed shellfish thickened with cream; cream soups are thickened with béchamel sauce; and veloutés are thickened with eggs, butter and cream. Other ingredients commonly used to thicken soups and broths include rice, flour, and grain.
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"Potage" (connoting the contents of the cooking pot) denotes a soup where meat and vegetables are boiled together with water until it forms a thick soup. In Medieval and Early Modern Europe, the peasant diet consisted almost solely of potage.
The word soup originates from the Teutonic word suppa, which refers to a Medieval dish consisting of a thick stew poured on slices of bread, called sop, used to soak up the liquid. Often described as potages, French onion soup is an example of a modern soup that retains this bread sop.
Thin soups became popular in Europe during the 17th century, when the spoon was invented. The spoon was designed to accommodate the new fashion of wearing large, stiff ruffles around the neck.
The word restaurant was first used in France in the 16th century, to describe a highly concentrated, inexpensive soup, sold by street vendors called restaurer, that was advertised as an antidote to physical exhaustion. In 1765, a Parisian entrepreneur opened a shop specializing in restaurers. This prompted the use of the modern word restaurant to describe the shops.
In America, the first colonial cookbook was published by William Parks in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1742, based on Eliza Smith's Compleat Housewife; or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion and it included several recipes for soups and bisques. A 1772 cookbook, The Frugal Housewife, contained an entire chapter on the topic. English cooking dominated early colonial cooking; but as new immigrants arrived from other countries, other national soups gained popularity. In particular, German immigrants living in Pennsylvania were famous for their potato soups. In 1794, Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, a refugee from the French Revolution, opened an eating establishment in Boston called Restorator, and became known as "The Prince of Soups". The first American cooking pamphlet dedicated to soup recipes was written in 1882 by Emma Ewing: Soups and Soup Making.
Portable soup was devised in the 18th century by boiling seasoned meat until a thick, resinous syrup was left that could be dried and stored for months at a time. The Japanese miso is an example of a concentrated soup paste.
Today, according to the Campbell Soup Company, chicken noodle soup is one of the most popular soups in America. It is considered by many an effective remedy for the common cold, and is sometimes referred to as "Jewish penicillin" (a reference to the stereotypical fondness of American Jews for chicken soup).
Commercial soup became popular with the invention of canning in the 19th century.
Fruit soups are served hot or cold depending on the recipe. Many recipes are for cold soups served when fruit was in season during hot weather. Some like Norwegian 'frukt suppe' may be served hot and rely on dried fruit such as raisins and prunes and so could be made in any season. Fruit soups may include milk, sweet or savoury dumplings, spices, or alcoholic beverages like brandy or champagne.
Cold fruit soups are most common in Scandinavian, Baltic and Eastern European cuisines while hot fruit soups with meat appear in Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Chinese cuisines. Fruit soups are uncommon or absent in the cuisines of the Americas, Africa and Western Europe. They are also not seen in Japan, Southeast Asia or Oceania.
A feature of East Asian soups not normally found in Western cuisine is the use of tofu in soups.
In the English language, the word "soup" has developed several phrasal uses.
A salad is a food item generally served either before or after the main dish as a separate course, as a main course in itself, or as a side dish accompanying the main dish. The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt". (See also sauce, salsa, sausage.)
Salad also commonly refers to a blended food item— often meat, seafood or eggs blended with mayonnaise, finely chopped vegetables and seasonings— which can be served as part of a green salad, but is often used as a sandwich filling. Salads of this kind include egg, chicken, tuna, shrimp, and ham salad.
In Denmark salad also refers to a blend of vegetables in a dressing used as a condiment on top of the famous Danish open sandwich, smørrebrød, and with meats. Examples include cucumber salad, horseradish salad, Italian salad (a mixture of vegetables in a creme fraiche/mayonnaise dressing, served on ham), and Russian salad (a red beet salad).
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The "green salad" is most often composed of a mixture of uncooked vegetables, built up on a base of leaf vegetables such as one or more lettuce varieties, dandelion, spinach, or arugula.
Other common vegetables in a green salad include tomato, cucumber, peppers, mushroom, onion, spring onion, carrot and radish. Other food items such as pasta, olives, cooked potatoes, rice, beans, croutons, meat (e.g. bacon, chicken), cheese, or fish (e.g. tuna) are sometimes added to salads.
A green salad is often served with a dressing. Some examples include:
Conception of salad dressing vary across culture. Common salad dressings in North American tend to be very broad. Traditional dressings in southern Europe were vinaigrettes. In China, where Western salad is a recent adoption from Western cuisine, the term salad dressing (沙拉酱, shalajiang) tends to refer predominantly to mayonnaise or mayonnaise-based dressings.
Some salads are based on food items other than fresh vegetables:
In the Middle Ages, after a long winter of salted meats and pickled vegetables, people would be "salt-sick" and starving for spring greens. A pregnant wife's yearning for rapunzel growing in the garden next door inspired the fairy tale of Rapunzel. Popular history asserts that peasants ate more salads than lords, and were the healthier for it, and in fact salads, cooked and raw, included many ingredients that would be "gourmet" today: lovage, burnet, sorrel.
The diarist John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets (1699), that describes the new salad greens like "sellery" (celery), coming out of Italy and the Netherlands.
There is also a Canadian rock/ska/regae band, called The Salads, who are known for their hit songs 'Get Loose', 'The Roth Kung Fu', and 'Today Is Your Lucky Day'.