We have kicked this around for a while. I guess the essence of the
issue is what came first, the legend/hype or the recipe? There does
not seem to be a recipe for "Brown Windsor Soup" before the 1960s, and
it would appear as if life imitated art - or comedy in this case.

Be aware that there are many references to "Windsor soup" and even
brown Windsor soup - which is often an OCR for "Brown Windsor Soap,
but wse are unable to find references the Brown Windsor along with a
recipe. Thanks, don't know if anybody can add anything new, but here
is the story:

'Tis the soup reputed to have built the British Empire." It was the
Victorian favorite, possibly the dominant English soup until WW2. It
was a staple of boarding-houses and always turned up in railway dining
cars.

Then there's the Railways. 'A Taste of Empire' by Cecilia
Leong-Salobir (2011) says Brown Windsor was "a soup omnipresent on the
train menus of British Railways" and an extraordinary number of people
seem to definitely remember it being served on trains.....

Paul Spicer in his non-fiction 2012 book, "The Temptress" 'The
Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord
Erroll', mentions Brown Windsor Soup being served on the British East
India's Uganda Railway from Mombassa to Nairobi in 1925.

Except it doesn't exist in cookbooks before 1961. And there may be no
reference at all to it before 1961.

Apparently, there was or is a Brown Windsor Soap and also a White
Windsor Soup made with white rice, and this seems to be the confused
source of the name created for the sake of humor around 1950.

Alec Guinness, in his best Alec Guinness sneery-voice, says, "I can
thoroughly recommend the Brown Windsor Soup", in the 1953 Ealing
Comedy 'The Captain's Paradise'....but it was the Goons that really
made BWS popular.

2013 article, good read:

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownwindsorsoup.htm

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