According to Lindsey Bareham, the first recorded soup recipe was of a barley soup from a Roman cook book, published at the end of the fifteenth century, written by the Roman epicurean Apicius. Soup is as old as the ages. It is in fact the oldest known food, as it probably derived at about the same time that we worked out how to bowl water. Soup, from the French word ‘soupe’ started off as gruel, boiled water with vegetables and maybe pulses or grains thrown in. Later on the emergence of the stockpot came about, where cooks would add mutton, beef or other bones to a big cooking pot, that would endlessly simmer away, replenished when needed, hence the word ‘pot-au-feu’.

Soup conjures up images of health and magic, restorative powers. We have found whilst putting this book together, that there is an endless fascination with all things to do with soup. It is a genuinely loved thing by most people you will meet. Whilst there were times during this book that the very mention of the word soup was enough to put us off our lunch, with the recipe testing, the reading, the research etc. we still find that even now we look through the book and find ourselves wanting to make a big bowl of soup.