Sops
"The etymological idea underlying the word soup is that of soaking. It goes back to an unrecorded post-classical Latin verb suppare soak', which was borrowed from the same prehistoric German root (sup-) as produced in English sup and supper. From it was derived the noun suppa, which passed into Old French as soupe. This meant both piece of bread soaked in liquid' and, by extension, broth poured onto bread.' It was the latter strand of the meaning that entered English in the seventeenth century. Until the arrival of the term soup, such food had been termed broth or pottage. It was customarily served with the meat or vegetable dishes with which it had been made, and (as the dreivation of soup suggest) was poured over sops of bread or toast (the ancestors of modern croutons). But coincident with the introduction of the word soup, it began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth on its own, and in the early eighteenth century it was assuming its present-day role as a first course."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press: Oxford] 2002 (p. 316)
"Our modern word "soup" derives from the Old French word sope and soupe. The French word was used in England in the form of sop at the end of the Middle Ages and, fortunately, has remained in the English language in its original form and with much its original sense. We say "fortunately" because it is clear that nowadays a "sop" is not a "soup." The distinction is important. When cooks in the Middle Ages spoke of "soup," what they and the people for whom they were cooking really understood was a dish comprising primarily a piece of bread or toast soaked in a liquid or over which a liquid had been poured. The bread or toast was an important, even vital, part of this dish. It was a means by which a diner could counsume the liquid efficiently by sopping it up. The bread or toast was, in effect, an alternative to using a spoon...Soups were important in the medieval diet, but the dish that the cook prepared was often a sop that consisted of both nutritious liquid and the means to eat it. The meal at the end of a normal day was always the lighter of the two meals of the day, and the sop appears to have had an important place in it. In fact it was precisely because of the normal inclusion of a sop in this end-of-the-day meal that it became called "souper" or "supper."
Here is what Terence Scully, author of The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, and P. W. Hammond, author of Food & Feast in Medieval England, have to say about this subject: "Most commonly only two meals were eaten in a day. Normally the first meal of the day was the major meal. This was dinner. It must originally have been prepared to fit into a late-morning pause after the initial activities of one's daily routine. Because this meal required so much preparation, particularly in affluent households, it could not usually be available much before noon, the sixth hour of the day. By that time half of the day's work - or play - could very well be done. To conclude one's active day a second meal was more easily prepared and served some six or eight hours later, at or just after dusk. Because the original basis for this meal was soup, or sops, it became known as supper. This meal too was subject to elaboration at the hands of professional cooks, but universally it remained a somewhat simpler meal than the midday dinner. According to Platina in the second half of the fifteenth century, at supper 'we must eat food which our stomach can digest easily; however, we must eat rather sparingly, and especially those of melancholy humour whose ills usually are increased by nighttime dampness and food weighing them down with discomfort.'
---Early French Cookery, D. Eleanor Scully & Terence Scully [University of Michigan Press:Ann Arbor] 1995 (p. 102)
The Italians borrowed the French method of soaking soupes of bread, called zuppe in Italian. They viewed this as a French custom, though. The Italians had customs of their own; variations on pasta gave substance to their minestre, the Italian equivalent of potages. These macaroni, lasgane and ravioli became so important that, after having been cooked in and served with the broth, they would be placed alone on platters; to this day, that style of eating bears the odd name minestra asciutta, or "dry soup."
Recipes:
