fruit soups especially popular in Germany and Nordic countries, are something of an anomaly. The category of soup is one of almost exclusively savoury dishes. Fruit soups, however, although they may be served at the beginning of a meal, are essentially sweet dishes. They may be thin and delicate or thickened and substantial. Riley M. Fletcher Berry (1907) made interesting comments about this distinction. He observed that, for the prosperous readers whom he was addressing, fruit soups would be served in very small glass or china bowls or bouillon cups; very delicate. However, he admonished these same prosperous readers, one should not forget that fruit soups ‘are foods and as such are used in many countries by even the peasants, though they may lack dainty table appointments’.
