Comments: All the classics are here – Chicken Noodle, Bouillabaise, Shrimp Bisque, Gazpacho, etc., etc., but there are also many very creative recipes. Among the more innovative: Snapper in Chinese Stock with Habanero; Chilled Curry Pear Soup; Creamy Sausage, Chickpea and Rosemary Soup; Orange Muscat Soup with Mascarpone Cream – well, there are just too many to mention. But unlike so many cookbooks where "creative" really means "weird," these creative recipes just look delicious.

What can these writers not make into a soup? Lasagna, Beef Stroganoff, Boeuf Bourguinon, Steak and Potatoes, Chicken and Dumplings – and a number of other previously landlocked dishes – have all been transformed into soups. Clearly it takes a lot of creativity to generate 300 recipes.

These writers are not afraid of cream and bacon and cheese (what we like to call flavor), but they don't appear to overdo their use, either.

Chapters cover chilled soups, vegetable, bean, cheese, meat, poultry, seafood, and dessert soups, as well as a primer on stocks (including suggestions for dressing up store-bought stocks), and a huge chapter on international soups (although international soups are also scattered throughout most of the other chapters, as well). Finally, there is a chapter on toppings and garnishes – everything from nine recipes for croutons (including brownie croutons for desserts) to sauces, salsas, and creams to dress up soups, and including fried sage leaves, spaetzle, wild mushroom risotto cakes, compound butter, etc. – that seems to us almost worth the purchase price of the book itself.