Disappearing soups

I’m having to adapt a lot of my recipes these days. Why? Because some ingredients are no longer available.

I’ve long used condensed soups & dry soup mixes as the basis for a sauce in a casserole etc. So on Tuesday we had Beef Popovers, using undiluted condensed oxtail soup. For a while it’s been difficult to find oxtail soup – a casualty of mad cow disease I’d thought. I changed to condensed beef & vegetable, though it wasn’t as good. Now even that seems to have disappeared from the scene. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to try next. I’ve spotted an oxtail cup-a-soup, maybe that would work if I reduced the amount of water I added. Or should I try extra thick gravy?

Wednesday saw me making a Chicken & Vegetable Pie for which I used to use a packet of Harvest Vegetable & Chicken Soup, using half quantities of water. That disappeared long ago. I have been using a mixture of a sachet of chicken soup & a sachet of veg soup mixed, or even, as this week, chicken & leek soup. However, the range of packet soups is reducing too.

Today I’m going to make Chicken à la King. For this the sauce is based on a packet of mushroom soup. They no longer make it in the pint/pint & a half packets. Instead I’m going have to use a mushroom cup-a-soup. Fortunately it’s not a flavour that has croutons n it.

All of these are recipes I’ve made, & enjoyed, for years. For us they are classics. Indeed the first recipe in my hand written recipe book, from our earliest married days is Salmon Fish Cakes, using condensed tomato soup, followed by Creamy Chicken ‘n Ham Pie using condensed chicken soup.

Why, oh why, do they have to change things?