Open up any cook book and turn to soups. it will invariably tell you to use stock, but without telling you what stock is let alone how to make it. It is a given, an implied assumption, that you have stock to hand ready to make your soup.

The New Covent Garden Soup Company's Book of Soups, after the briefest of introductions, tells you how to make stock. Not one stock but several stocks: vegetable stock, chicken stock, fish stock, beef stock and game stock.

For those that do not know, the New Covent Garden Soup Company produces quality fresh soups, or as fresh as can be without making yourself, from quality ingredients. Not cheap, but vastly superior to the horrible stuff that comes out of a can. If you want better, then you will have to make it yourself.

And that is where the New Covent Garden Soup Company's Book of Soups comes in. One hundred recipes to help you make your own soups, from the company whose passion is soup.