Talk:Cream soup

There's this whole Category:Cream soups

@Jake Brockman: I don't know if there's a lot of rhyme or reason behind how stuff ended up in that category; maybe it should've been called Category:Creamy soups. When I think of a cream soup, I think of a soup that either is a cream or has a cream in it. But a creamy soup could be any soup with a creamy consistency/texture. Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 14:25, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Зенитная Самоходная Установка: and also pinging @TheLongTone:. I don't dispute that cream soups exist. They certainly do. I have eaten them. There are two thoughts/concerns that I have: 1) The cream soup article is entirely unsourced. Other than an arbitrary list of soups, what do we really add as value to the reader. You allude to a key question: what is a cream soup. We - as Wikipedians - can't just arbitrarily bunch up all soups of creamy consistency along the line of what we think. We need proof from external sources, ideally from a well regarded culinary source. 2) Even if we have that source, is it useful to differentiate between soups, cream soups and "cream of anything soups"? If there enough to go by? In this respect, I think "cream of anything" is a very unfortunate title. That sounds a bit like a catch-all for those soups that people can't agree on where to categorise them.

It may be an idea to move this all to draft and incubate. There is certainly not a lot at the moment in this guesswork that warrants keeping this in main space. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 14:45, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

A lot of the Internet-based sources, such as food blogs, use the term "cream of anything soup" or "condensed cream soup" (probably inspired by, e.g., Campbell's condensed cream of _____ soups).

Well-regarded culinary sources can be hard to find, which of course raises WP:GNG issues. Occasionally the New York Times will have a recipe, sometimes with a few paragraphs about the dish. It's hard to find good secondary sources, a lot of times; a lot of times food-related articles on the Internet are going to be primary sources.

With regard to calling a soup creamy, I view that as potentially a WP:BLUESKY issue if it comes down to it (which may be how some articles ended up in Category:Cream soups), but there probably even are sources out there that would say such-and-such soup is "creamy". For example, Eating Well magazine (which I assume is a more well-regarded source than a lot of the food blogs out there) has this page on creamy soups such as Zuppa Toscana. So it may be better to just have an article about "creamy" soups. I see that delish has an article on "Creamy (But Totally Creamless) Soups" which suggests there's a distinction between cream soups and creamy soups.

A lot of times, with regard to culinary stuff, there's not a lot of agreement out there about how to categorize or name stuff. So they'll use descriptive terms, or compare one dish to another, but on Wikipedia we have to have an article with a particular name, so it doesn't always mesh well with that structure. Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 15:38, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Зенитная Самоходная Установка: great thanks for this. It certainly makes a lot more sense now in my humble opinion. I appreciate that sourcing will be tough - food is essentially a transient and non-tangible cultural good. There is no ONE recipe of any one dish, there will be variations from village to village and indeed within members of the same family. Crossing borders, it becomes a potentially hotly contested cultural discussion e.g. where a beloved Chinese dish ends and where a beloved Japanese dish starts, that to an outsider might seem like "just" variations of the same thing. Having said that, we should be mindful not to slip into WP:OR. Anyway, let's start to build from this article and see if there is a case for cream/creamy or other soup categories. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 08:45, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Seattle Times says

For soup, puréeing some of the beans gives it a luxurious mouthfeel, like a cream soup. I wonder what they had in mind when they said "cream soup". Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 15:42, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

recipetips.com says a cream soup is

Any type of soup that is prepared by adding cream at the end of the cooking process. The soup is often pureed before the cream is added. The finished soup has a smooth texture and rich flavor even when simple ingredients such as grains, vegetables, meat, or fish are used as the basis for the soup. Oh, okay. So a cream soup actually has cream in it. Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 15:45, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

So I'm thinking cream of anything soup should just be merged into this

Based on allrecipes.com, it would seem cream of anything falls under cream soups. Зенитная Самоходная Установка (talk) 15:48, 20 July 2019 (UTC)