Soup vs. potage


Soup vs. potage
It's true that we're finally coming out of winter as I write these lines, and that we'll all be making, no doubt, a little less soup and potages, but even if it's out of season, it really is a simple and delicious dish, which is one of the always easy answers to "What's for dinner this (Sunday) evening?".

Speaking of soups and potages, even if they're very similar, do you know the difference?
9,184
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:SoupPotageDifferenceCookingVegetablesBrothWater
Last modified on: April 9th 2022
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
Soup vs. potage

Soups

soupe


Basically, it's water and vegetables cut into small pieces, seasoned and cooked until the vegetables are well done, to obtain a soup.
Of course, the basic recipe can be enriched by replacing the water with broth or milk, for example, or by adding various small ingredients: leftover cooked meat, legumes, croutons, etc. etc. The only limit is your imagination, and what you have in your cupboards or fridge.

Potages

potage


Basically, it always starts out as a soup: water + vegetables that you cook, but then there's the difference: you blend it or put it through a food mill, and you get a soup.
A soup that can also be enriched and improved by adding all kinds of ingredients: Cream, grated cheese, a little cornflour to thicken, etc.
The term "potage" comes from the 17th century, in the sense of "vegetables cooked in a pot", and then gave rise to "potager", a place where vegetables are grown for soup.

As you can see, it's more a question of texture: soup has chunks, while potage is smoother.

Having said that, this boundary is rather blurred, as the 2 words are used for a whole host of very different dishes on restaurant menus, for example, and thus fall outside the usual domain: starter or single dish, hot and savory.
Desserts include fruit soups, for example, which are often a fruit juice or a custard, or both, in which pieces of fruit are placed.
In short, with the imagination of chefs, a soup is just about any dish, made up of a liquid part and a solid part in small pieces, strawberry soup for example.

soupe de fraises


Other words


In addition to soup and potage, there are other related words, a little outdated nowadays, to designate more specific kinds of soup:

Consommé: In principle, this is a soup in which the water is replaced by a broth, usually beef, which is fairly full-bodied and sometimes with wine added. In ancient times, it was a popular starter at festive meals.

Velouté: This is a soup generously enriched with cream, and sometimes bound with a little cornflour, and very carefully blended or even sieved, all to obtain something very smooth and creamy.

Bisque: This is a soup based on cream and shellfish (lobster, shrimp, etc.).

All these appetizing variations should not blind us to the fact that there's almost nothing simpler to make than a soup at home: water, a few vegetables, salt/pepper and you're done!
And let's not forget that soup has been the mainstay of our meals, if not the meal itself, for centuries (just look at the number of expressions with "soup" in them: soupe au lait, soupe à la grimace, cracher dans la soupe, ...).
It's a dish that's probably as old as humanity itself, and can be found in every culture, in every country. A good thing it has in common with bread.

To sum up: soup is mainly vegetables cooked in water, so there are chunks, whereas potage is a soup that has been blended or put through a food mill.

Lasts posts
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20251,350
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20254,4645
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20254,7815
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20252,9855
Add a bay leaf
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31th 20253,0885

Other pages you may also like
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20251,350
85 grams of eggs?
85 grams of eggs?
Some time ago, I already spoke to you about the difference between baking and pastry-making, I emphasized, among other things, the precision of pastry-making which requires grams, cm, degrees and minutes. That's why, on the one hand, you have baking and cooking, where a certain tolerance is...
November 26th 201854 K4.6
The window-pane test in bread-making
The window-pane test in bread-making
The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
June 16th 202194 K 23.9
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
A flan Parisien, or boulanger, is a simple yet delicious cake. A cream, a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar, is poured into a raw pastry base and baked in the oven until the pastry and cream are cooked. This is the simplest version of the recipe, probably the original one, but nowadays the cream...
July 21th 202313 K4.7
The "caves" in the bakery and pastry shop
The "caves" in the bakery and pastry shop
Maybe you've already done this? You want to make a brioche or a cake with fruit inside, you decide to proceed with your usual recipe, but also to add in the dough pieces of fresh and raw fruit, or whole fruit, for example pieces of apples or pears, good idea. When you bake it, everything seems to...
March 27th 202111 K4.9
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page