Windsor soup

British soup

Windsor soup or Brown Windsor soup is a British soup. While commonly associated with the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the practice of calling it 'Brown Windsor' did not emerge until at least the 1920s, and the name was usually associated with low quality brown soup of uncertain ingredients. Although Windsor soup comprised elegant recipes among famous chefs of the 19th century, the 'Brown Windsor' varieties became an institutional gruel that gained a reputation as indicative of bad English food during the mid 20th century, and a later source of jokes, myths and legends.

[[File:A Royal Luncheon Party at Windsor. jpg|thumb|left|Queen Victoria luncheon at Windsor (1895) with her daughter Princess Beatrice's family. Victoria "embraced, wholeheartedly, all the world had to offer her to eat", including, on occasion, Windsor soup, though she never supped Brown Windsor soup. Another similar Windsor soup recipe was published 11 years later in the influential 1845 cookbook The Modern Cook by British Italian Charles Elmé Francatelli, who was Queen Victoria's head chef from 1840 to 1842. and includes white wine and cream, chicken and noodles – it is a white soup. The Modern Cook was an influential guide book for Victorian women who wanted to emulate the Queen; it was a cooking bible in many households ensuring its currency at home and in upper end restaurants. Contrary to beliefs that Queen Victoria ate the soup frequently, it rarely appeared on the royal menus, and never as a "brown" soup. Variations on Francatelli's recipe appeared throughout the 19th century. Typical recipes called for calf's feet and Madeira wine, A 'white' version that uses Windsor beans was published in 1855. Some were made from mutton, beef and rice. Agnes Marshall had a simple barley and meat version, and French chef Auguste Escoffier created a creamy Windsor soup at the Savoy Hotel restaurant in the 1890s, a favourite eatery for English royalty including the Prince of Wales.

A number of myths, legends and assumptions grew around the soup. Some sources assert that Brown Windsor soup was not popular in reality, and was primarily a joke meme that originated with the 1953 Ealing Studios film comedy The Captain's Paradise. By this argument, the soup's name was repeated in the memoirs of many authors over the following decades who misremembered (intentionally or otherwise) the popularity or even existence of the soup, to artistic or humorous effect. As noted by John Lanchester, "There is a sinister genius in the very name Brown Windsor soup". One researcher found a number of recipes for 'brown soup' that is a bone based broth with some similarities to Windsor soup, and hypothesized there might have been a commingling of 'Windsor soup' and 'brown soup' in the memories of later commentators. This connection was made in a 1958 New Yorker restaurant review, "The cold meat was quite good, and the flavour of the fine brown soup recalls the war," to which another reviewer responds, "A fine brown soup formally listed on British menus as a "Brown Windsor soup" is as hard to imagine as a fine kind of dislocated elbow." A number of authors have noted the similarities with "Brown Windsor soap", which was well known in the Victorian era, and suggested there might be a connection. Windsor and/or Brown Windsor has been associated with the British Railways by a number of authors, although historians have had trouble verifying it ever existed. Malcolm Timperley, a researcher in the National Railway Museum's library and archives, reported that their team specifically researched the existence of Brown Windsor soup in British dining cars. After checking scores of menus dating back to the nineteenth century they failed to find any mention of it. Nevertheless, according to author Paul Spicer, Brown Windsor was popular on British railways, and "was often said to have built the British Empire". Author Jane Garmey, writing about it in 1981, said Brown Windsor was "continually served by British Railways in their dining cars", and from her childhood memories she "assumed it was the only soup that could be served on a train" due to its ubiquity. Fictional barrister Rumpole of the Bailey mentioned eating it on the Great Western Railway in a book of short stories dated 1978, although Quinion questions whether this is an endorsement of the soup, "the extract confirms that the soup was at one time a staple of the restaurant menus of British Railways," in Quinion's view.