Queen Victoria’s Brown Windsor Soup

Brown Windsor soup is thought to have originated in the Victorian and Edwardian eras although the exact date is unclear. Anybody who happened to be at sea during the 1950s and 1960s on a British Merchant vessel will have enjoyed this soup on board. There were various soups served on the ships, creatively named by whoever happened to be doing the cooking, but Brown Windsor soup would have stood out for its unique flavour. The ingredients in this soup vary but the main ingredients, namely the beef, lamb and meaty stock, make it a rich, hearty dish. If you think soup cannot be filling, try this recipe and you will see that it can.

This tasty English soup makes a warming lunch or you could serve it for dinner with bread rolls on the side. If you want to serve it as a starter recipe, then it will serve 8 instead of 4 people. Follow up with poultry or seafood as your main dish. You will find this soup very simple to prepare since you just have to brown the meat and then stir in the other ingredients. Let it cook slowly on the hob for a couple of hours, then serve hot.

Although it is traditional to stir a tablespoon of Madeira into each portion of soup before serving, this is optional. The Madeira does go well with the beef stock though. French onion soup is often based on beef stock and has Madeira or sherry stirred into it, and the concept is similar here. Make this flavourful soup and enjoy a true taste of English history in every mouthful.

Enjoy a taste of historic England by making this Brown Windsor soup. This is rich and meaty and it makes a filling lunch or dinner. You could even serve it as a starter but keep the portions small because it tends to be filling. This is a nice, meaty treat. You can use mutton or lamb in here. Mutton is old lamb. If you cook it slowly it can be just as tender as lamb, but it does tend to be stronger in flavour, so if this is not your favourite meat you might want to use regular lamb instead of mutton, or else just use beef instead.