Ladle up steaming bowls of savory soup for your family any time soon and that cold, wet winter storm outside won't seem so threatening.

There's nothing like great soup to make the winter blahs disappear, whether it's the traditional grandma favorite, chicken noodle, or a creamy bowl of apple-flavored butternut squash.

France's Auguste Escoffier -- renowned 19th century cookbook author who was called "the king of chefs and the chef of kings" -- maintained that "soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite."

Recipe Talk: What is your favorite soup recipe?

Writing about soup, Miss Manners (who is American newspaper columnist Judith Martin) declared some years ago: "Do you have a kinder, more adaptable friend in the food world than soup? Who soothes you when you are ill? Who refuses to leave you when you are impoverished and stretches its resources to give you a hearty sustenance and cheer? Who warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer?

"Yet who also is capable of doing honor to your richest table and impressing your most demanding guests? ... Soup does its loyal best, no matter what undignified conditions are imposed upon it. You don't catch steak hanging around when you're poor and sick, do you?"

And she's right about that. Soup is as much an appetite-satisfying way to start a meal as it is a meal in itself.

Soup can be as thin as consommé or thick like gumbo; it can be smooth like bisque or chunky like chowder. It can be hot or served cold, like vichyssoise or a fruit soup offered on a warm summer day.

Popular in all cultures around the world, soup can take on exotic ingredients, like shark's fin in the Orient. It can turn up with similar ingredients in disparate cultures -- like tiny filled dumplings in rich broths in Italy and Germany, or vegetable- or meat-filled wontons in a Chinese chicken stock.

Several cultures use inexpensive innards as prominent ingredients, such as tripe in Spanish menudo or in the pepper pot soup popular in Philadelphia.

Bread, veggies and beans partner up in Italian ribollita; lamb and barley are the main ingredients in hearty Scotch broth; pork, hominy, dried chiles and cilantro come together for Mexico's thick posole; while crab and roe are flavored with sherry and Worcestershire sauce in creamy she-crab soup popular in Savannah and South Carolina's low country.

We turned to five outstanding cookbooks in order to provide Register readers with recipes for hearty winter soups.

"Nothing feeds the body and soothes the soul like a bowl of steaming hot soup," authors Leslie Jonath and Frankie Frankeny note in "Soup's On!" (Chronicle Books), which contains recipes from some of the world's most respected chef, authors and teachers.

"Whether you prefer a steaming bowl of chicken soup, spicy beef stew or creamy tomato soup, each heartwarming spoonful crosses economic lines and ethnic flavors: it enlivens, takes us back to our mothers' kitchens and heals the common cold."

From that relatively new cookbook, we've selected Joanne Weir's "Smoked Ham, White Bean and Tomato Soup with Mint."

From another treasure trove of soup recipes -- "Mollie Katzen's Recipes: Soups" (Ten Speed Press) -- we've selected a colorful, savory Russian Cabbage Borscht.

One of our favorite books comes from St. Helena's Susan Costner, "Mostly Vegetables" (Bantam Books). If you're looking for creative dishes featuring all manner of garden vegetables, you can't go wrong with Costner's cookbook. For our soup fanciers, we've included her recipe for Winter Pot-au-Feu with Pureed Eggplant and Roasted Garlic.

Another dog-eared cookbook is Jeannette Ferrary and Louise Fiszer's "A Good Day For Soup" (Chronicle Books). From this soup-lover's book comes a hearty "Winter Roots and Sausage Soup."

Finally, we couldn't talk about soup without including at least one recipe from the late Julia Child, America's favorite television chef. Julia Child loved soup and one of her favorites was a classic French onion with cheesy croutons. In fact, French onion soup was her last meal. Her recipe for this treasured soup is included in today's Register.