Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World's Best Soups Book

Daft title, evoking memories of Lewis Carroll ("Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup"), for what is otherwise a fine book. James Peterson's Splendid Soups is about as comprehensive a survey of the soups of the world as you could wish for. Perhaps one should say the world of soup, as over 400 recipes can induce a feeling that soup is as much a philosophy of life as a source of nourishment. The definitions do tend to stretch in works of this kind, so that in the end practically anything can be recomposed as a soup of one form or another. This is encyclopaedist's soup making, imbued with a slightly mad orderliness. So we encounter Broths and Consommés, Vegetable Soups (encompassing the sub-categories of Single-Vegetable Soups, Beans, Lentils and Dried Peas, and Mixed Vegetable Soups); Fish Soups, Bivalve Shellfish Soups and Crustacean Soups. Meat Soups, Bread Soups, Dairy Soups and Fruit and Dessert Soups box the compass. The recipes are very good indeed, and authentic (although modified here and there to suit American tastes or the exigencies of the supermarket). Soup of the evening indeed; soup for every occasion, in fact. --Robin DavidsonRead More