This cream soup with chicken has at least two stories associated with its name. Some sources say that the gourmand Louis XVIII (1755–1824) invented the soup when he was Comte de Provence, and known as Louis Stanislas Xavier de France. Others suggest the soup was named after Francis Xavier (1506–1552), a Basque missionary to Goa and India. The gout-suffering associate of Talleyrand would seem a more likely candidate than a 16th-century Christian missionary.
