This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. In traditional French cuisine, soups are classified into cold borscht main groups: clear soups and thick soups.

The established French classifications of clear soups are bouillon and consommé. Other types of soup include fruit soups, dessert soups, pulse soups like split pea, cold soups and other styles. The earliest evidence for soup in human culinary practice dates to the Upper Palaeolithic period when thermally altered rocks became commonplace in the archaeological record. Small boiling pits are present on the Gravettian site Pavlov VI.

France in the 16th century, to refer to a highly concentrated, inexpensive soup, sold by street vendors, that was advertised as an antidote to physical exhaustion. Portable soup was devised in the 18th century by boiling seasoned meat until a thick, resinous syrup was left that could be dried and stored for months at a time. An advertisement for Campbell’s canned soup, c. Commercial soup became popular with the invention of canning in the 19th century, and today a great variety of canned and dried soups are on the market. Since the 1990s, the canned soup market has burgeoned, with non-condensed soups marketed as “ready-to-eat”, so they require no additional liquid to prepare. 5 billion bowls of these three soups alone each year. East Asian-style instant noodle soups include ramen and seasonings, and are marketed as a convenient and inexpensive instant meal, requiring only hot water for preparation.

Western-style dried soups include vegetable, chicken base, potato, pasta and cheese flavors. For a more comprehensive list, see List of soups. In French cuisine, soup is often served before other dishes in a meal. In 1970, Richard Olney gave the place of the entrée in a French full menu: “A dinner that begins with a soup and runs through a fish course, an entrée, a sorbet, a roast, salad, cheese and dessert, and that may be accompanied by from three to six wines, presents a special problem of orchestration”. Fruit soups are prepared using fruit as a primary ingredient, and may be served warm or cold depending on the recipe.