THE BATTLE OF THE SOUPS

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In THE BATTLE OF THE SPIRITS, whisky comfortably won with rum, vodka and gin coming next in the poll.

It's now the turn of the soups to do battle! With winter looming, at least for us in the northern hemisphere, there's nothing like a bowl of hot soup to warm the cockles up.

The French have two types of soup - clear soups (eg bouillon and consommé soups) and thick soups (eg bisque, cream, purée and velouté soups). Despite the French trying to lay down the soup rules, it's the Asians who seem to most love their soup and who seemingly break all the rules by throwing almost anything into a soup!

It's not easy distinguishing a soup, especially a thick soup, from a stew. For this poll, I'm excluding stews such as goulash, gumbo and scouse. But I'm including broths, chowders and the many noodle-based soups like laksa, phở and ramen. I'm also including potages; a potage is just a fancy term for a thick soup served in a pot.

Lentils caused me problems in my categorisation of soups. Should a carrot and lentil soup be classified as a carrot soup, a lentil soup or a vegetable soup, or even have its own category? Likewise, should vegetable and lentil soup be classified as a vegetable soup or a lentil soup? I decided that carrot and lentil soup is a carrot soup and that vegetable and lentil soup is a vegetable soup. But I tell you what, those lentils are very naughty!

Furthermore, I'm excluding fruit or dessert soups. This poll is only concerned with savoury soups, whether hot or cold soups.

Even after these exclusions, my longlist contained well over a hundred soups. Any food and drink can be turned into a soup. There's beer soup, bread soup, cucumber soup, lettuce soup, nettle soup, water soup and wine soup, plus the increasingly popular 'my sausage is bigger than your cucumber' soup!

Of the soups I've tried, my favourites are bacon and lentil soup, beef consommé, beef phở (a Vietnamese noodle soup), bouillabaisse (a French fish soup), broccoli and stilton soup, carrot and coriander soup, clam chowder, crab bisque, cream of asparagus soup, cream of mushroom soup, cream of tomato soup, French onion soup, gazpacho (a Spanish cold soup), hot and sour soup, leek and potato soup, mulligatawny (an Indian curry soup), pea soup, ramen soup, vegetable soup and watercress soup.

But my favourite soup is Cullen skink - see photo below. Cullen skink is a Scottish broth made from smoked haddock, potatoes and onions; it's quite similar to but smokier than American chowders. It's often on the breakfast menu at hotels here.

Of the soups I've not tried, I'd particularly like to try a zuppa pavese, an Italian peasant broth made from bread (fried or stale), eggs (poached) and herbs served with grated cheese. Sounds scrummy!

My least favourite soups that I've tried are butternut squash, celery, miso, nettle and oxtail soup. But chicken soup is the worst soup I've tasted.

However there are some soups I'd turn my nose up to. Ant egg soup (a Laotian and Thai delicacy), bat soup (even if Batman has it for breakfast), bird's nest soup (a Chinese speciality made from the hardened saliva taken from the nests of swiftlets), bosintang guk (a Korean dog meat soup), ciorbă de burtă (a Romanian beef tripe soup), cockchafer soup (an old French soup made from cockchafer insects), cow's brain soup (a Filipino street food), cow tongue soup, czernina soup (a Polish duck or goose blood soup), drštková soup (a Czech beef tripe soup), flaki soup (a Polish tripe soup), Indian mutton soup (aka mutton bone soup), işkembe çorbası soup (a Turkish tripe soup), liver soup, lobster bisque, lung fung soup (a Chinese soup made from chicken and snake), magaritsa soup (a Greek lamb offal soup), menudo soup (a Mexican tripe soup), patsas soup (a Greek lamb, sheep or pork tripe soup), Philadelphia Pepper Pot soup (a beef tripe pepper soup), pork blood soup, powsowdie (a Scottish sheep's head broth), red pepper tomato cricket soup (made with cricket insects), sea urchin bisque, seolleongtang soup (a Korean soup made by boiling cow bones, feet, head, organs, brisket and shank for a long time until a creamy colour), sopa de mondongo (a Central/South American tripe and vegetable soup), shark fin soup, Soup Number 5 (a Filipino soup made from bull's testicles), tiger penis soup (an expensive Chinese speciality) and turtle soup will never touch my lips. I don't want no offal nor tripe in my soup, but I don't mind a few croutons falling into my soup.

What are your most and least favourite soups?
Do you regularly make soup?

I've never made soup unless opening a can of soup, emptying the soup into a saucepan and heating up the saucepan full of soup counts! Nearly all my soup comes from a can or is served up in a bowl at a restaurant. I don't do instant powdered soups.

Below is a poll where you can anonymously select your most favourite soup. Unfortunately only one pick is allowed in the poll.

But a poll on this site can only have 20 answer options. There was no room for açorda soup, ajo blanco soup (a Spanish cold soup), ant egg soup, artichoke soup, asparagus soup, aubergine/eggplant soup, avocado soup, bacon soup, bakso soup (an Indonesian meatballs soup), barley soup, bat soup, bean soup (eg black bean soup, green bean soup, white bean soup), beer soup, bird's nest soup, borscht (a Russian/Ukrainian beetroot and cabbage soup), bread soup, broccoli soup, cabbage soup, cauliflower soup, celery soup, cheese soup, chicken corn egg drop soup, ching po leung cantonese herb soup, chorba soup, cockchafer soup, corn chowder (eg Vermont corn chowder), cucumber soup (a cold soup), dog meat soup (eg bosintang guk), duck soup (not the Marx Brothers' film), egg drop soup, egusi soup (a popular Nigerian soup), game soup, gazpacho, goat soup, harira soup (a North African soup), kale soup, kimchi guk, laksa, lamb soup, leek soup, lentil soup, lentil and bacon soup, lettuce soup, liver soup, lobster bisque, lotus root and pork soup, lung fung soup, matzah/matzo ball soup (a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish soup), miso soup, mole de olla soup (a Mexican soup), mulligatawny soup (an Indian curry soup), mutton soup, nettle soup, offal/tripe soup, okra soup, okróshka soup (a Russian cold soup), oxtail soup, parsnip soup, partridge soup, pasta fagioli soup, pea and ham soup, peanut soup, pea and mint soup, pea soup, pheasant soup, phở soup (a Vietnamese beef, chicken or pork noodle soup), pickle soup, pigeon soup, pork soup, pozole soup (a Mexican soup), prawn/shrimp bisque, rassolnik soup, red pepper tomato cricket soup, saimin soup (a Hawaiian noodle soup), Saint-Hubert consommé (made from hare meat), sausage soup, Scotch Broth, sea urchin bisque. seaweed soup, shark fin soup, sinigang soup (a Filipino soup rated as the best soup in the world by Taste Atlas), sopa de fideo, spinach soup, sweet potato soup, taco soup, tiger penis soup, tom yum soup (aka tom yam soup), tortilla soup, tteokguk (a Korean sliced rice cake soup), turtle soup, veal and vegetable soup, venison soup, venison vegetable soup, walnut soup, watercress soup, water soup, wedding soup (aka Italian wedding soup), Windsor soup (aka Brown Windsor soup), wine soup, wonton soup, yaka mein soup and zuppa pavese. Hopefully I've covered all the popular soups as poll options. If 'other' ever wins, then that I've done a bad job compiling the poll!

I think chicken soup will win this poll. But butternut squash soup, clam chowder, hot and sour soup, mushroom soup, ramen soup, tomato soup and vegetable soup may fare well in the poll. However, given I'm clearly hedging my bets, and for the first time in doing these polls, I'm worried that 'other' may be declared the best soup here!

I want to thank (yet again) @EnigmaInitiative for her very helpful advice in compiling this poll, especially in suggesting ways to trim down my longlist. Any mistakes with the poll are my mistakes, unless of course 'other' wins the poll!

Please see the first comment below to see what has won each battle of the food and drinks so far.

Cullen skink:

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