There was a thread from last year that touched on this but was primarily about the classification of just the milk.
From the online Oxford dictionary:
From Merriam-Webster:
Given these basic definitions it would seem that breakfast cereal and milk, a dish commonly referred to simply as “cereal,” qualifies as a type of soup.
What do you think?
Quoth OED:
No mention of soup. And the dish referred to as “cereal” is all about the grain/cereal itself. The milk is an auxiliary thing.
But isn’t the “cereal” just an ingredient?
Yes, it’s perfectly edible right out of the box, or even from a bowl sans anything else, but so is milk. Breakfast cereal + milk = a composed dish. Tomatoes, garlic, onion, water, olive oil, vinegar and salt are all edible by themselves, but they don’t become gazpacho until they are mixed together.
Breakfast cereal is the only food that typically lists the nutritional values of both itself alone and with an additional ingredient, i.e. milk, which would infer that they are intended to be eaten together.
What if we leave milk out of it, to ask about oatmeal and water?
Soup needs to be cooked in some fashion, typically by, as the definitions say, boiling the food in stock or water.
Cereal is cooked, sure, but as dry ingredients independent of the liquid, be it milk, water, or orange juice. The dish is then merely assembled by putting the cereal and milk in the same bowl. You wouldn’t make soup by pouring water and noodles or cut chicken into a bowl and then eating it straight. Ergo, cereal isn’t soup.
I could be convinced that it is…raw soup. I suppose using hot milk on your shredded wheat is breakfast soup.
Tomorrow morning my kids will be asked, “What kind of breakfast soup do you want?” I expect quizzical looks, followed by “Daaaad!”
Bosstone, don’t forget about Mr. Noodles / Pot Noodles / Cup’O’Soup!
Gazpacho needn’t be cooked. It’s basically just blended vegetables. Breakfast cereal does have cooked ingredients, but they are already prepared.
M-W’s first definition of soup makes no mention of it needing to be cooked. In fact there are a number of raw soup recipes out there that, by definition, aren’t cooked.
I could see how someone could call cereal with milk “cereal soup.” It’s cereal with a liquid added. Chicken and noodles with a liquid added becomes chicken noodle soup. Beef and barley with a liquid added becomes beef barley soup.
I believe both of the definitions definitely exclude cold cereal, and probably hot cereal as well.
Both quoted definitions say that the dish is made from made with “(boiling) meat, fish, or vegetables” in “stock (or water)”, while cereal is made by pouring cold milk over dry grain products. Something like oatmeal or cream o’ wheat probably also doesn’t qualify since the end result is still entirely grain (soaked in water, but not floating in a liquid base).
First of all, the cereal is not always submerged in the milk. There can be far more cereal than milk.
Second, the milk is not cooked or blended/pureed, which rules out hot soup and cold soup.
Is grain a subset of vegetable?
A bowl of breakfast cereal is no more a soup than a stack of pancakes is a layer cake.
It’s a cream soup 
Right, and I mentioned them. But they’re prepared independently of the soup.
I can see raw soups, but I disagree with your second paragraph. Chicken and noodles plus chicken stock is chicken noodle soup, sure, but the stock was premade by boiling chicken in water.
Chicken + noodles + water = not chicken noodle soup. It’s chicken noodle water.
But, okay, so we have raw soups. Consider the following then:
Putting chicken in water is not soup.
Boiling chicken in water makes stock or broth, which can be considered soup on its own.
Putting tomatoes in water is not soup.
Tomatoes blended to a liquid consistency is soup.
That suggests then that the liquid needs to be made from at least some of the ingredients, even if other ingredients are added whole later.
So if you mashed or blended the cereal into a uniform consistency and mixed it with milk, I could be convinced that’s cereal soup. Liquidy oatmeal could even be considered that too. But I just can’t see cereal + milk = cereal soup.
ETA: Okay, clearly I don’t have enough to do at work if I just wasted 20 minutes thinking about soup. :smack:
I would say no. This is a culinary discussion not a botanical discussion. In cooking grains and vegetables are used differently.
Ah, but the milk does not remain just milk, adding it to cereal changes the milk. See milk added to Cocoa Krispies.
If the resulting dish was merely milk and cereal bits, the two should be able to be separated back into their constituent parts, but they cannot. Adding them together irreversibly changes both ingredients into something else.
And yet the liquid still isn’t made of milk plus Cocoa Krispies, it’s milk plus flavoring.
If I put cut tomatoes in water, I’m sure some tomato juices and detritus would leak out into the water, but that doesn’t mean I’ve made tomato soup or gazpacho.
Does that likewise exclude fruit, such that blueberries or slices of banana are no help?
Yes, but if you have prepared noodles and prepared chicken broth and add them together, you just made chicken noodle soup. What’s the difference? Because broth doesn’t come from a cow’s teat?
