Windsor soup or Brown Windsor soup is a British soup. While commonly associated with the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the practice of calling it 'Brown Windsor' did not emerge until at least the 1920s, and the name was usually associated with low-quality brown soup of uncertain ingredients. Although Windsor soup comprised elegant recipes among famous chefs of the 19th century, the 'Brown Windsor' varieties became an institutional gruel that gained a reputation as indicative of bad English food during the mid-20th century, and a later source of jokes, myths and legends. Origins and heyday In 1834 Henderson William Brand – chef to King George IV and the inventor of what would become A.1. Sauce – published a cookbook containing a recipe for Vermicelli Soup, à la Windsor. It is a white meat broth and noodle soup that Brand said was a favourite of George III and IV. Another similar Windsor soup recipe was published 11 years later in the influential 1845 cookbook The Modern Cook by British-Italian Charles Elmé Francatelli, who was Queen Victoria's head chef from 1840 to 1842. He called it Calf's Feet Soup, a la Windsor (or Potage a la Windsor) and it was made from calf's feet or oxtail consomme creating a thick gelatine body, and includes white wine and cream, chicken and noodles – it is a white soup. The Modern Cook was an influential guide-book for Victorian women who wanted to emulate the Queen; it was a cooking bible in many households ensuring its currency at home and in upper-end restaurants. Contrary to beliefs that Queen Victoria ate the soup frequently, it rarely appeared on the royal menus, and never as a "brown" soup. Variations on Francatelli's recipe appeared throughout the 19th century. Typical recipes called for calf's feet and Madeira wine, and was sometimes darkened to a deep brown with caramel colouring and spiced with cayenne pepper, as in a recipe by the Waldorf Astoria's head chef Oscar Tschirky. A 'white' version that uses Windsor beans was published in 1855. Some were made from mutton, beef and rice. Agnes Marshall had a simple barley and meat version, and French chef Auguste Escoffier created a creamy Windsor soup at the Savoy Hotel restaurant in the 1890s, a favourite eatery for English royalty including the Prince of Wales. Decline and fall By the 1920s, enthusiasm for Windsor soup was perceptibly waning. As Evelyn Waugh noted