Cold Soup

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less, but requires additional unattended time.

Low-fat buttermilk and nonfat yogurt provide the base in a refreshing, tangy soup.

Chef Louis Diat created this famous cold soup (without the peas, which are a nice addition) during his tenure at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. Diat named the soup after Vichy, the resort town near his boyhood home in France. Hot potato-leek soup had been popular with French chefs for centuries, but Diat-inspired by his own childhood habit of adding milk to hot soup to cool it of-served his version cold. Exactly when vichyssoise first appeared on the hotel menu is unclear, but British food writer Elizabeth David claimed that it debuted in 1917.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The pink-peppercorn garnish gives this chilled soup a pretty spring look.

Simmering cobs in the corn-broth mixture gives the soup extra flavor.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Elderflowers, with their subtle, honeyed sweetness, are often paired with gooseberries in English cookery. In this particular recipe pink gooseberries are best; the green ones are too tart.

Straight from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This is one of mom's specialties for a summer lunch or dinner.

When we think of gazpacho most of us think of a cold chunky tomato-based soup. But this world-renowned export from the Andalucian region of Spain is actually one of many different types of soup — cold, hot, thin, red, green and white — which share the name gazpacho. White gazpacho remains closer than most modern varieties to the soup's origins as a simple combination of bread, nuts, salt, olive oil, and vinegar. Cucumbers, grapes and a pinch of cayenne elevate what was once a poor man's meal to a refined soup.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

For an even more elegant presentation, make a design in or swirl the two soups.