Soups

These recipes show you some of the ways in which pepper is used to good effect in soups – either to link and round off flavours, to add warmth, colour and aroma, to balance sweetness or to perk up blandness. Whatever its role, and however much or little is used, pepper makes itself felt and you would certainly notice if it was not there.

Taking a cook’s look at soups around the world, it becomes obvious that pepper is a key ingredient, and with good reason. It provides gentle background warmth to that all-time comforter, Jewish chicken soup. It makes itself quietly felt in the British classics Scotch broth and cock-a-leekie, brightening the flavour of seemingly modest ingredients such as root vegetables, cabbage and pearl barley. Pepper works its magic on tomato-based soups such as gazpacho or Provençal fish soup, and it peps up chowders and creamy white bean soups.