What is soup?

[bleudauvergne]

...I asked her if won ton mein was soup and she said, "That's noodles. Not soup. Why would you call noodles soup? Soup is soup, like house soup!

The problem with saying "won ton mien" is the word "mien", which means noodles. It's like saying hey mom, are noodles soup? The natural answer is, no, noodles are noodles. Won tons are noodles that you often find in broth, but they are also sometimes fried alone.

The word for soup in mandarin is "tang". Try asking her about that, and she'll say it's soup. If the name of the dish has the word "tang" meaning soup in it, you can be assured it is soup. Another chinese word for soup is "geng" which means a thicker soup.

Dumplings are often found in soup (tang), but they are also served in many forms and in many ways without the broth.

edited to add I don't know the cantonese word for soup, sorry.

Reading above posts the fact that in HK wontons come in soup, thus the assumption is that it's soup is because the name of the dish has been abbreviated, it probably once contained the word for soup but has been abbreviated since wontons in HK are served that way. In shanghai, though, if you ask for wonton, you're going to get a question - which way?

Edited May 22, 2004 by bleudauvergne (log)

[balex]

There are a number of features/dimensions here associated with soupiness (soupitudity? soupiosity?):

Linguistically: does it have the word soup (or foreign language equivalent) in the name for the dish?

Substance: is it mostly liquid? Is it savoury?

How is it served: Is it served in a bowl, and/or with a spoon to eat it with? Rather than knife and fork, or chopsticks?

When is it served: is it served at the culturally appropriate moment for soup? At the beginning of the meal (European), end of the meal (Chinese...)

So there are a lot of clear cases: consomme etc. which score on all these features, and some difficult penumbral ones: Hungarian cherry soup (Yes) versus rhubarb fool (No).

It is important to realise that different cultures may place the soup/non-soup divide in different places.

There is no fact of the matter about it, no right answer; and the only time it really matters is when you are translating.

You can have the same argument about lots of other areas: e.g. is a kilt a skirt? Is this low prayer table a table or a stool? etc. etc.

[MobyP]

In the Pellegrino Artusi "The Art of Eating Well," many of the pastas are labled as 'soups' denoting not their content, but their original position in the meal.

[balex]

Hey, I deleted a line in my post saying that some Italians consider all pastas to be soup at some level of abstraction. Were you reading over my shoulder?

I even read once (shudder) that you shouldn't drink wine with pasta because of this reason. I think Bugialli mentions this horrible and justly neglected rule in one of his books.

[herbacidal]

I've gotten a lot of dumplings right out of the steamer, accompanied by dipping sauces, and that includes pork dumplings.

You're right. I meant that pork dumplings are usually served w/o broth.

They're usually served either steamed or fried.

The traditional sauce would be vinegar.

Note bleudauvergne's comment about use of soup in northern areas.

[Yuki]

The dumplings that I make at home are usually pan fried or boiled in water(it is served without any liquid, with vinegar and garlic as dippling sauce). I am not even sure what regional varieties they are. I think in Hk, when people cook dumplings at home or get it at noodles shop, it is usually boiled or pan fried. The steamed dumplings are usually found in dim sum or the Shanghai restaurants.

Anyways... as long as it is dumplings, I will eat them.

[bleudauvergne]

I might have thought of Tortellini in Brodo as a European equivalent: A kind of dumpling in broth, which is definitely seen as minestra (soup) in Italy.

We will sup on tortelli in brodo this evening.

[MobyP]

Hey, I deleted a line in my post saying that some Italians consider all pastas to be soup at some level of abstraction.  Were you reading over my shoulder?

I even read once (shudder) that you shouldn't drink wine with pasta because of this reason. I think Bugialli mentions this horrible and justly neglected rule in one of his books.

Yet another truth in our soupertudinous quest...

[Hest88]

The problem with saying "won ton mien" is the word "mien", which means noodles. It's like saying hey mom, are noodles soup? The natural answer is, no, noodles are noodles. Won tons are noodles that you often find in broth, but they are also sometimes fried alone.

The word for soup in mandarin is "tang". Try asking her about that, and she'll say it's soup. If the name of the dish has the word "tang" meaning soup in it, you can be assured it is soup. Another chinese word for soup is "geng" which means a thicker soup.

No, I don't think this is the case. It's not just semantics. Or, to put it another way, the food item is what creates the semantics, not the other way around. It's really inconceivable to my mom, as I talked to her further, to think of won ton mein as soup even though it contains a broth. She was thinking of won ton mein as a dish and it's *always* noodles and won tons in a broth. That's like saying "hamburger" to someone and not assuming that they know it's ground beef in a bun. To her, won ton mein is always the same and it's never thought of as soup.

[Pan]

In the Pellegrino Artusi "The Art of Eating Well," many of the pastas are labled as 'soups' denoting not their content, but their original position in the meal.

When was that written?

[Pan]

There are a number of features/dimensions here associated with soupiness (soupitudity? soupiosity?):

Soupidity?

[Jinmyo]

NOUN: 1. A liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces. 2. A liquid rich in organic compounds and providing favorable conditions for the emergence and growth of life forms: primordial soup. 3. Slang Something having the appearance or a consistency suggestive of soup, especially: a. Dense fog. b. Nitroglycerine. 4. A chaotic or unfortunate situation. 

Click.

[MobyP]

In the Pellegrino Artusi "The Art of Eating Well," many of the pastas are labled as 'soups' denoting not their content, but their original position in the meal.

When was that written?

1891 - first published, but it went through dozens of latter printings due to it's popularity.

[Pan]

Thanks, Moby.

[bleudauvergne]

Hest 88 - It seems like the cantonese word for noodles is not "mien", does your mother come from a mandarin speaking part of China? In Shanghai, won ton mien can be served without the broth, and I recall my Taiwanese friend also liked them plain, cooked in broth but eaten with sauce instead of the broth, which was served after.

It seems that serving them steeped in broth only (never serving them alone) could be a Cantonese thing - I don't know, but maybe someone who knows this region better can explain?

Your explanation of principally considering the wonton as the dish rather than the soup would certainly make sense. It would be interesting to know what part of China your mother's family comes from, which be a factor in explaining the history behind that.

Mien - definition

Edited May 23, 2004 by bleudauvergne (log)

[balex]

The problem with saying "won ton mien" is the word "mien", which means noodles. It's like saying hey mom, are noodles soup? The natural answer is, no, noodles are noodles. Won tons are noodles that you often find in broth, but they are also sometimes fried alone.

The word for soup in mandarin is "tang". Try asking her about that, and she'll say it's soup. If the name of the dish has the word "tang" meaning soup in it, you can be assured it is soup. Another chinese word for soup is "geng" which means a thicker soup.

No, I don't think this is the case. It's not just semantics. Or, to put it another way, the food item is what creates the semantics, not the other way around. It's really inconceivable to my mom, as I talked to her further, to think of won ton mein as soup even though it contains a broth. She was thinking of won ton mein as a dish and it's *always* noodles and won tons in a broth. That's like saying "hamburger" to someone and not assuming that they know it's ground beef in a bun. To her, won ton mein is always the same and it's never thought of as soup.

You're absolutely right to point out that with man-made things like soup the relationship between object and language is a little more convoluted, because when people invent things they slot them into pre-existing categories.

But (I am assuming your mother is a native speaker of dialect of Chinese?) your mother's intuitions about what 'soup' aren't going to help us, since they are just intuitions about what "tang" is. And though the normal translation of "tang" may be "soup" they are different words with different meanings.