The word soup originates from "sop", a dish originally consisting of a soup or thick stew which was soaked up with pieces of bread. The modern meaning of sop has been limited to just the bread intended to be dipped.

The word restaurant was first used in France in the 16th century, to describe a highly concentrated, inexpensive soup, sold by street vendors called restaurer, that was advertised as an antidote to physical exhaustion. In 1765, a Parisian entrepreneur opened a shop specializing in restaurers. This prompted the use of the modern word restaurant to describe the shops.

 

In America, the first colonial cookbook was published by William Parks in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1742, based on Eliza Smith's The Compleat Housewife; or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion and it included several recipes for soups and bisques. A 1772 cookbook, The Frugal Housewife, contained an entire chapter on the topic. English cooking dominated early colonial cooking; but as new immigrants arrived from other countries, other national soups gained popularity. In particular, German immigrants living in Pennsylvania were famous for their potato soups. In 1794, Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, a refugee from the French Revolution, opened an eating establishment in Boston called Restorator, and became known as "The Prince of Soups." The first American cooking pamphlet dedicated to soup recipes was written in 1882 by Emma Ewing: Soups and Soup Making.

Portable soup was devised in the 18th century by boiling seasoned meat until a thick, resinous syrup was left that could be dried and stored for months at a time. The Japanese miso is an example of a concentrated soup paste.

 Commercial soup became popular with the invention of canning in the 19th century, and today a great variety of canned and dried soups are on the market. Dr. John T. Dorrance, a chemist with the Campbell Soup Company invented condensed soup in 1897. Today, Campbell's Tomato, Cream of Mushroom and Chicken Noodle soups are three of the most popular soups in America. Americans consume approximately 2.5 billion bowls of these three soups alone each year. Canned Italian-style soups, such as minestrone are also popular. Oriental-style soup mixes containing ramen noodles are marketed as an inexpensive instant lunch, requiring only hot water for preparation. In response to concern over the health effects of excessive salt intake soup canners have introduced reduced-salt versions of popular soups.