How Was Soup Made?

Before it was most common to get your soup in a can, soup was made in all sorts of ways, and many changes came about as technology was improved. Older recipes in this collection would have been made over a hearth, an open fire in the household contained in a single area usually built with a structure to cook on. For soup, a pot would be hung to boil water and then cook vegetables and meat within. In the 'Dominion Home Cook Book' of 1868 we can see another technology, the Soup Digester (seen left), which was a special pot to be cooked over a fire for a long amount of time, and then once done was poured through special sifter lid to make it smooth. As technology advanced, the stove came about, first powered by coal but then by gas and eventually electricity, as many are today. With the modern stove, soups were able to be made in pots over hot elements to boil the water.

Most soups require a base of water, to cook the vegetables and/or meat, but, as it was readily available in most of settled Ontario, milk became extremely common in later soup recipes. This gave most soups a creamy texture that made the meal different from others. Most cookbooks in this collection had a wide array of soup recipes, and so whichever vegetables or meats were available, you could probably find one to make. As more ready-to-use commodities became available at Ontario shops, and trade networks got bigger, soup recipes gradually called for more unique spices. From "salt and pepper to taste" to adding "paprika for garnish", recipes can be seen to develop with the increase in access to what would have once been luxury goods.

Most soup was made to eat fresh, but a few recipes include instructions for how to bottle and then prepare later. Storage of soup was not the most common as many soup recipes came from throwing the remainder of ingredients one had together. As soup recipes developed from necessity to desire, though, more storage techniques came about.