Starting with Basic Flavors: An Almost Universal Technique

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Published 2000

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Although the ingredients that cooks choose to flavor their soups vary throughout the world, certain techniques are almost universal—for instance, the preparation of a flavor mixture lightly cooked in oil or fat before any liquid ingredients are added. Because onions, carrots, celery, garlic, sweet peppers, ham, spices, and certain herbs release a more pungent and forthright flavor when gently cooked in fat than when simmered directly in liquid, this is often the first step in soup making.

In southern European soups, this flavor base—soffrito in Italian, mirepoix or matignon in French, and sofregit in Catalan—is likely to include garlic, onions, carrots, celery, fennel, and herbs such as thyme or marjoram, lightly cooked in olive oil. Each country has its own variations; Moroccan cooks are likely to include cinnamon and turmeric, the Provençaux may add dried orange peel, and the Spanish will include ham. Northern and Eastern European cooks as well as New Englanders are likely to prepare a simple flavor base of onions gently stewed in a little butter or bacon fat.