Where is the line between soup and sauce?

If we accept quantity as the way to tell the difference, is a large bowl of sauce (meant for several helpings to many guests) a soup? When you take a spoonful of soup, does it become a sauce during the time it's on your spoon?

Others have proposed it's a matter of consistency, that soups generally are thinner than sauces. But there are sauces as thin as water, so I don't find that to be a satisfactory answer either. The other ways to tell them apart often is just highly subjective, such as the purpose of it. "If it's meant to be a full course, it's a soup, if it's meant to be complementing something else, it's a sauce." But in that case, if I fully intend to eat sauce as my main course, then it... becomes soup? Some restaurants serve a small bowl of soup as an apetizer and an apetizer isn't a full course. Is a soup apetizer a sauce? As you can see, that's not working.

Some sauces have been known to be ingredients in soup, so in some cases, sauce become soup. If you keep adding sauce to the soup - at what ratio is it no longer a soup but a sauce? I've been up late at night over this.

 

A practice not uncommon in many Asian countries, I wonder if this is to preserve the semantic integrity of the dish?

I refuse to believe we can't produce a dipping baguette fitting for this experimental purpose, I think it's more of a priority issue at this point. I suspect we have to put a hold on this hypothesis until other pressing issues have been resolved, creating more financial room to pursue said baguette/s.

This is currently my favorite approach, taking the concept of "author's intent" into account before every soup and sauce. One should always take the time to contemplate: is this meant to be a soup or a sauce?

Edit: But this, too, introduces problems. What if I make a bread and claim my intent was and is to make a soup. Is, then, the bread soup?

 

At first I was going to jokingly brag about the amount of sauce I can eat before getting tired of it, but as you say, there often is a limit. A soup can be enjoyed until one is full, a sauce can possibly be too intense. But I mean... it's still subjective, some people even enjoy eating raw chilli fruits.

 

As you pointed out yourself we kind of derailed that introduction thread and I found the topic to be too valuable so here we are.

First and foremost the priority should be to determine if the oceans can be classified as soups, only after this comes the, important none the less, task of flavor classification.

This is also an interesting suggestion, the nutritional value of the substance could very much play a role. But surely there must exist sauces with enough vegetables (and/or other nutritional ingredients) to keep a body healthy? Just as there demonstratably are soups that fail to sustain us.

 

Me too! I don't want to jump to conclusions but the oceans stand a good chance of qualifying as soup. Oh, if only the baguette plans were set in motion.

So, to sum up what we have discussed so far:

Quantity
Consistency
Intent/area of use
Nutrition

None of the above have singlehandedly provided a satisfactory answer, which poses the question: is there a definitive factor we have yet to consider or does the answer lie in the combination of the above variables?

 

Is there enough water in the universe to call it a soup or is it more of a stew?