Dinner, for which space is limited, is more elaborate; four courses, with perhaps cauliflower and fennel soup, salmon souffle and Northumberland roast beef.

On a recent day, as chocolate cakes were baking, Miss Bidwell was trying out a recipe for cream of fennel soup and sardines Provencal.

Last year Sylvain Humbert from Château de Valmer in Provence arrived with a magic suitcase from which he pulled frozen fennel soup with truffles and olive-stuffed rabbits.

I like the creamy fennel soup, too, a simple puree with the insistent taste of anise.

On a recent brutally cold evening, puree of fennel soup was just what I needed to kick-start my failing engine - the light cream-based blend was subtle and restorative.

They talked over dinner - cold fennel soup and fish - for more than two hours, then Mr. Clinton and Mr. Barak spent three and a half hours together, breaking up well past midnight.

A soup, a fennel soup.

Starters include grilled shrimp with white beans, sage and radicchio; fresh fig goat cheese and pine nuts; and chilled carrot and fennel soup.

For a Southern Hemisphere winter dinner, a tiny tureen of fennel soup with crunchy chunks of almond and a thin slice of toasted almond bread was offered as an appetizer.

The chilled fennel soup is not green but a cream color.