Talk:Windsor soup

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Name

Does anyone know if it is named after the town or the royal family? Mannafredo (talk) 11:32, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd guess the town, since the royals have only been Windsors since 1917 (when Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became a bit of an embarrassment.) --Ef80 (talk) 19:00, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Links

The link to White Windsor Soup appears to be broken. It claims to link to the Wikipedia article on the subject but there isn't one (81.2.101.178 (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2013 (UTC))

Joke joke

The notion that BWS is a post-war joke is contradicted by the hundreds of sources available through, for example, Google Books. We do not overthrow that for speculation in a couple of newspaper articles. Clanclub (talk) 20:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The number of other sources is irrelevant when they are all repeating the same unexamined story. One or two sources that did research into the soup are worth more than a thousand sources that did none. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 03:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Non-existance of evidence is not evidence of non-existance. There is evidence that BWS predates the 1950s. The problem is that much of it is as ephemera - menus and the like. There are, however, some firm pieces of evidence. The earliest I know of is a menu that appeared in The Portsmouth Evening News - Wednesday 24 February 1926, page 3: An advertisement for Cadena Cafes of 20 Osborne Road Portsmouth. The Special Table d'Hote Luncheon features Brown Windsor Soup. That was for the 2/6 choice rather than the 2/- alternative. So it appears that in 1926 at least, Brown Windsor Soup was positioned as an upmarket version of brown soup. The British Newspaper Archive also features a number of other examples through the late 1920s to 1930s. Portsmouth Evening News 24th February 1926 Page 3 .Mbbowe (talk) 13:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Well that's interesting. Your the first to provide solid evidence of something called Brown Windsor Soup in a source predating its supposed "legend". Unfortunately I don't have access to britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk but would like to see what the sources say and context. Still, there is more here than the existence of the soup, but also the "legend" of it being a downmarket soup that was very popular and bad. Since we can't do original research on Wikipedia, we can't debunk the legend ourselves and have to continue to report on it. At best we can report on old sources that mention the existence of the soup, it would be a public service. -- GreenC 15:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The British Newspaper Archive does unfortunately require a subscription to view the contents. I am new to editing Wikis and was not able to embed a graphic of the relavent advertisement. However, I could email a copy of the ad or the whole page. I agree that the historical context is fascinating. Clearly it was considered posh in the 1920s, but being a brown soup it had the potential to be abused and I think that would have been the case during the The Depression and the austerity years following the war. Spike Milligan had an unerring eye for pretension and by the 1950s BWS would have been perfect material for him. The tide turned so much that I understand that many British have never heard of it . As material for comedy, its effect would have been more effective if it was well known to the (wary) public. Mbbowe (talk) 07:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Its no joke

I can tell you from personal knowledge that BWS was available and consumed regularly through the Second World War and in the forties following it. I believe it fell out of favour for the very reason that people associated it with wartime shortages and were sick of the sight and taste of it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.165.103 (talk • contribs)

You are surely right, thin brown soups were consumed in Britain (and many other countries besides). Herein is the problem: there's no unambiguous record of a "Brown Windsor" soup from the period when it supposedly existed as a popular item. All references come afterward. A search of millions of books and journals across 100s of years basically find nothing prior to the 1950s (the one reference to Garrett's obscure and ambiguous). This is not to say it didn't exist, it's an interesting mystery soup. Thanks for the personal recollection. Maybe we need to search on a different term such as "BWS" or a mfg name. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Monica Dickens mentions a woman whose idea of a suitable four o’clock meal was brown Windsor soup followed by prunes and custard in chapter 13 of "The Fancy"[2], published 1943 (later editions are titled "Edward's Fancy").--88.73.11.234 (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes see below, this was reported by etymologist Michael Q and now incorporated into the article. -- GreenC 17:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Quinion says

The generally reliable World Wide Words also found no significant mention before the 1950s, but adds a few nuggets to its possible origins. Onanoff (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Michael Quinion is a reliable source. I'll incorporate this into the article thanks for the heads up. -- GreenC 16:05, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Hiya GreenC. I'm worried about the Quinion quote as the Rumpole extract doesn't suggest anything of the sort. What it shows is simply that Mortimer in 1978 believed that it might have been on British Railway menus - a very different thing. Cooke (talk) 07:33, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I agree. Fiction is not reality, it only shows the Mortimer imagined the soup was eaten. It may have been, or not. I communicated with Quinion a few months ago about the new evidence discovered, the restaurant menus containing adverts for BWS from the 1920s and 30s, and he said he would publish an update in his newsletter. At some point hopefully we can refactor the Quinion quotes. If you have an idea for the Rumpole please go ahead. -- GreenC 14:04, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The article still quotes Quinion misleadingly saying that the fiction book is proof of the soup being served on railways. Equinox ◑ 19:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

It's in a section titled "Myths and legends", at the end of a paragraph that is clear how uncertain/controversial it is .. what you make of his quote is up to you , but not factually "proving" anything, it is his opinion/POV presented in quotes. Wikipedia allows for multiple POVs even when you and/or others disagree with them. -- GreenC 20:01, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

White vs Brown

If White Windsor soup is "well-known" and "equally famous", why 1) is there no article about White Windsor soup 2) is Windsor soup redirected here? Btw, it might be of notice that Jamie Oliver offers his own recipe that includes Marmite. --146.255.183.110 (talk) 13:35, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It would probably make sense to have an article on Windsor soup with a section each for White and Brown. -- GreenC 14:01, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

References

Lipstick on a pig

I have a working theory the soup is a case of "lipstick on a pig". The key fact is that there is no consistent recipe for the soup. The soup could have been made with anything the chef might have available that day, likely the leftovers from yesterday. A brown soup stock can be made by simply browning flour. This reuse of leftovers in soups is common in the restaurant business. The "Windsor" name was added to give it a gloss of something of class or importance, instead of the murky name "brown soup". Thus during the 1920s and 30s, it earned a reputation (or lack of one) which became a butt of jokes after the war. -- GreenC 16:24, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Oxtail soup

Having just eaten a can of oxtail soup for lunch, I wonder if BWS was a variant of, or alternative name for, oxtail soup. The UK version of this is a dark brown fairly runny soup with no obvious evidence of oxtail or other whole ingredients in it. It remains a standard canned soup variety in British supermarkets and is reasonably popular. It was around when I was a child 60 years ago, and presumably is much older than that. --Ef80 (talk) 12:03, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

BTW, I have no recollection of ever seeing BWS on menus or for sale in shops during my lifetime. It has always been a mythical butt of jokes about awful cooking. That doesn't mean it wasn't sold in restaurants in the 20s and 30s of course, and there are plenty of modern recipes for it if you google, though there's no knowing how authentic these recipes are given that nobody seems to know exactly what BWS was. --Ef80 (talk) 13:10, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

We can probably establish two things for certain: BWS existed in restaurant menus in the 20s and 30s without being the butt of jokes (that we know of). Sometime after WWII, possibly starting with the 1953 film The Captain's Paradise, it became the butt of jokes and was no longer on menus.

To me it looks like during the inter-war years restaurants were serving a brown "mystery soup" of whatever leftovers and calling it "Brown Windsor" to give it respectability, then after the war those who remembered it piled on mockery as both a joke and to highlight how much better the times were post-war. There's also some social or class element given its lowly reputation called "Windsor". -- GreenC 19:43, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

You may well be right, but it's equally possible that BWS was just a posh name given to oxtail soup by restauranteurs after the adoption of the Windsor surname by the royals. As you imply, there's plenty of opportunity to cut corners with soup recipes and the quality may have progressively dropped. It's odd that hard information about BWS has disappeared in only a couple of generations. --Ef80 (talk) 10:22, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes I think we are saying much the same thing, but you have narrowed the stock base to oxtail soup which is a perfectly valid theory since Oxtail is sort of like offal and humble pie with all the traditional lowly association; though these days it's kind of the opposite with slabs of cheap meat for the commoners while eating from the whole animal is for elite foodies, organic local free-range of course. -- GreenC 15:13, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

"Lack of connection to the Royal Family"

The article presently says "Quinion says there is no connection to the royal family itself since Windsor soup predates 1917, when the family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor."

The link then gives "A few very early recipes for Windsor soup say it should include Windsor beans, presumably the source of the name (despite one claim online, there’s no connection with the British royal family, which changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor only in 1917)."

Quinion is basically incorrect; although the Royal Family have only been the Windsors since 1917, the town of Windsor has been connected with them since the year dot because of the castle there. And Victoria - from whose era the soup is meant to have come - basically lived at Windsor when she was not at Balmoral after Albert died. So there is a fundamental incorrectness here. 88.104.160.83 (talk) 18:25, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Sentence removed. I like Quinion, but much of what he says on this topic is turning out to be unreliable or at least questionable. -- GreenC 21:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Brown Windsor Soap...

For what it's worth.

There was a product regularly advertised for sale in Sydney Town in 1832, imported by 'druggists' (meaning chemists, pharmacists) named 'Brown Windsor Soap'.

Now, whether 'Brown Windsor Soup' became a Victorian-era pun, applying this name to an unappetising dish, who can say?

The soap exists and can be Googled. 2001:44B8:3102:BB00:E90F:4EF5:838:AED9 (talk) 22:36, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

WWI

The more I learn about this multifacted soup history, the question remains, and the one that Michael Quinion attempts to narrow on, how did it go from a delicate upper-end recipe served in the world's best restaurants to a cafeteria gruel and ultimately an icon of bad English food. The transition appears to have happened between the turn of the century and the early 1920s. The celebrity chefs were still making it by 1900 as evidenced in cook books. By 1920s it is showing up in provincial cafeterias when the name "Brown Windsor" first appears. The major event of that period was WWI, though it doesn't need to be that, it would be an obvious candidate for a catalyst. -- GreenC 00:01, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Article rewritten

After extensive research the article has been totally rewritten and expanded as of April 2020, following are some notes while it's still fresh in my mind.

• The theory that Brown Windsor never existed (except as a joke) is very unlikely and not well supported by sources. This theory rests on the absence of evidence in the form of recipes and menus. Except there is abundant evidence for the soup in the form of memoirs and memories most of which confirm it was served in cheap hotels. Cheap hotel menus from the 1930s-50s are not readily available. And it may have been a "soup of the day" or chalked on a board or some other impermanent method. The absence of menu evidence is not evidence of soup absence. Also the absence of recipes misses the point, this was the classic mystery soup whose ingredients were any leftovers at hand that came out brown. It was a product of the Great Depression and food rationing that lasted (for meat) until 1955.
• After the 1920s it's difficult to tell the difference between "Windsor soup" and "Brown Windsor Soup" - memoirs conflate them and the soups follow the same downward trajectory of poor reputation. As such the article does not attempt to differentiate too much treating them as part of the same cultural phenomenon. There might be a split with "Windsor soup" as a wartime canned food (probably awful) and Brown Windsor Soup being a cheap hotel special, but this difference is not definitive because there are 1920s cafe Brown Windsors and one mention of soup kitchen Windsor.
• The Windsor soup originally created by Francatelli is somewhat elaborate but at its base is a bone soup from calf's feet. This would be riffed on by celebrity chefs particularly in the 1880-90s when restaurants went through a historic change democratizing fine dining, opening the lifestyle of the gentry, from private dining rooms and estates, to anyone who could pay the tab at the Savoy or Ritz. Auguste Escoffier's cooking style was a conscious emulation (and improvement) of private home dining by the gentry.

-- GreenC 14:39, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Glyn Hughes

Source: Diana Hubbell (2022-01-12). "One of the Most Famous Victorian Dishes Is a Hilarious Lie". Atlas Obscura. Even though few Brits have ever actually spotted brown Windsor soup in the wild, many will staunchly defend its historic reputation. Glyn Hughes has spent years challenging the Victorian roots of brown Windsor soup—"I keep trying to correct the Wikipedia page, but I've given up"—and has faced considerable fury for his efforts.

Oh what a lot of nonsense. Nobody tried to "correct" the article. Nor has there been "considerable fury" lol. The article does not say Brown Windsor soup originated in the Victorian era. Everything Hughes says in that article (that is accurate) was lifted straight out of Wikipedia based on research and writing done by volunteer editors and other sources; then he tries to cover his tracks by saying Wikipedia is the problem - rather than his actual source. We frequently see stuff like this, people taking credit for material they found on Wikipedia then disparaging Wikipedia. For example Hughes says he researched the British Railway Menus, but as our article shows, this was done by Malcolm Timperley, a researcher in the National Railway Museum's library in 2016. Hughes says he researched the British Newspaper Archive, but as this talk page shows (above), it was done by a previous Wikipedia editor years ago. He is simply repeating research he found on Wikipedia then claiming he did it. The hilarious thing he confidently says it was all a joke mixup with Brown Windsor Soap - but as our article shows this is pure speculation without any evidence, and, it's contradicted by real Brown Windsor Soup on store menus in the 1920s. Some joke. -- GreenC 23:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)