Slavic sour soups are common in Polish, Romanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Moldovan cuisines, and examples are also found in other cuisines. They may be based on vegetables, grains, meats, fish or dairy. Ukrainian beet-based borscht origins from this family of soups; the popularity of the soup benefited from the addition of beets.

 In fact, although the very word "borscht" is influenced by Yiddish-speaking people; the Slavonic words борщ/barszcz refer to a historical component of the initial brew - борщевик (e.g. common hogweed, not to be confused with XX-XXI century invasive species of Sosnowsky hogweed

Many soups in these culinary traditions are called borscht or similar-sounding names, but with sometimes wide variations in ingredients and preparation methods. The principal common trait among such soups is a tart flavor from sour-tasting ingredients. ^[1] The sour flavor may come from fermentation or from sour or tart ingredients.

Examples

In Polish cuisine, white borscht (barszcz biały, also known as żur or żurek, 'sour soup' ^[a]) is made from a fermented mixture of rye flour or oatmeal and water. It is typically flavored with garlic and marjoram, and served over eggs and boiled fresh sausage; the water in which the sausage was boiled is often used instead of meat stock. ^[3]

In the Carpathian Mountains of southern Poland, the tart taste comes from dairy products, such as whey or buttermilk. ^[4]

Sour soups that contain animal (usually poultry) blood mixed with vinegar is dark brownish-gray in color and are termed "gray borscht" (barszcz szary), which is a regional name of the Polish blood soup better known as czernina. ^[5]

Green borscht (zeleny borshch ^[b]), a light soup made from leaf vegetables, is an example common in Ukrainian and Russian cuisines. The naturally tart-tasting sorrel is most commonly used, but spinach, chard, nettle, garden orache and occasionally dandelion, goutweed or ramsons, may be added as well, especially after the spring season for sorrel has passed. ^{[6] [7] [8] [9]} Like beetroot borscht, it is based on meat or vegetable broth and is typically served with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, sprinkled with dill. ^[10] There is also a variety of Ukrainian green borscht which includes both sorrel and beetroots. ^[11]

In Romanian and Moldovan cuisines, a mixture of wheat bran or cornmeal with water that has been left to ferment, similar to, but less cloudy than that used in Polish white borscht, is called borș. ^{[12] [13]} It is used to impart a sour taste to a variety of tangy Romanian soups, known as either also borș or ciorbă. Variants include ciorbă de perișoare (with meatballs), ciorbă de burtă (with tripe), borș de pește (with fish) and borș de sfeclă roșie (with beetroots). ^{[14] [15]}

History

Sour hogweed brew

Borscht derives from a soup originally made by the Slavs from common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium, also known as cow parsnip), which lent the dish its Slavic name. ^[16] Growing commonly in damp meadows throughout the north temperate zone, hogweed was used not only as fodder (as its English names suggest), but also for human consumption—from Eastern Europe to Siberia, to northwestern North America. ^{[17] [18]}

The Slavs collected hogweed in May and used its roots for stewing with meat. ^[16] As for the stems, leaves, and umbels; these would be chopped, covered with water and left in a warm place to ferment. After a few days, lactic and alcoholic fermentation produced a mixture described as "something between beer and sauerkraut". ^[19] This fermented product was then used for cooking a soup.

The said soup—with aforementioned fermented hogweed concoction used—was characterized by a mouth-puckering amount of sourness in its taste, while its smell was described as pungent ^[20] As the Polish ethnographer Łukasz Gołębiowski wrote in 1830, "Poles have been always partial to tart dishes, which are somewhat peculiar to their homeland and vital to their health." ^{[c] [21]} Simon Syrenius (Szymon Syreński), a 17th century Polish botanist, described "our Polish hogweed" ^[d] as a vegetable that was well known throughout Poland, Ruthenia, Lithuania and Samogitia (that is, most of the northern part of Eastern Europe), typically used for cooking a "tasty and graceful soup" ^[e] with capon stock, eggs, sour cream and millet. More interested in the plant's medicinal properties than its culinary use, he also recommended pickled hogweed juice as a cure for fever or hangover. ^[22]

One of the earliest possible mentions of borscht as a soup is found in the diary of German merchant Martin Gruneweg, who visited Kyiv in 1584. After Gruneweg reached river Borshchahivka in Kyiv's vicinity on 17 October 1584, he wrote down a local legend saying that the river was so named because there was a borscht market. However, he doubted the story noting that " Ruthenians buy borscht rarely or never, because everyone cooks their own at home as it's their staple food and drink". ^[23]

Another early written reference to the Slavic hogweed soup can be found in Domostroy (Domestic Order), a 16th century Russian compendium of moral rules and homemaking advice. It recommends growing the plant "by the fence, around the whole garden, where the nettle grows", to cook a soup of it in springtime and reminds the reader to, "for the Lord's sake, share it with those in need". ^[1]

Hogweed borscht was mostly a poor man's food. The soup's humble beginnings are still reflected in Polish fixed expressions, where "cheap like borscht" ^[f] is the equivalent of "dirt cheap" (also attested as a calque in Yiddish and Canadian English), ^{[24] [25]} whereas adding "two mushrooms into borscht" ^[g] is synonymous with excess. ^[26] For the professors of the University of Kraków, who led a monastic way of life in the 17th century, hogweed borscht was a fasting dish which they ate regularly from Lent till Rogation days. ^[27] It was uncommon on the royal table, ^[16] although according to the 16th century Polish botanist Marcin of Urzędów—citing Giovanni Manardo, a court physician to the Jagiellonian kings of Hungary—the Polish-born King Vladislaus II used to have a Polish hogweed-based dish prepared for him at his court in Buda. ^[28]

Grains in the sour soups

With time, other ingredients were added to the soup, eventually replacing hogweed altogether, and the names borshch or barszcz became generic terms for any sour-tasting soup. In 19th century rural Poland, this term included soups made from barberries, currants, gooseberries, cranberries, celery or plums. ^{[29] [30] [31]}

When describing the uses of common hogweed, John Gerard, a 17th century English botanist, observed that "the people of [Poland] and Lithuania [used] to make [a] drink with the decoction of this herb and leaven or some other thing made of meal, which is used instead of beer and other ordinary drink". ^{[h] [32]} It may suggest that hogweed soup would be, on some occasions, combined with a fermented mixture of water and barley flour, oatmeal or rye flour. Such soured, gelatinous flour-and-water mixture, originally known as kissel ^{[i] [33] [34]} (from the Proto-Slavic root *kyslŭ, 'sour' ^{[35] [36]}) had been already mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years, a 12th century chronicle of Kievan Rus', ^{[37] [38]} and continued to be a staple of Ukrainian and Russian cooking until the middle of the 19th century. ^[39] In Poland, a soup based on diluted kissel became known as either żur ^[40] (from Middle High German sur, 'sour' ^[41]) or barszcz and later—to distinguish it from the red beetroot borscht—as barszcz biały, 'white borscht'. ^[42]

The earliest known Polish recipes for borscht, written by chefs catering to Polish magnates (aristocrats), are from the late 17th century. Stanisław Czerniecki, head chef to Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, included several borscht recipes in his Compendium ferculorum (A Collection of Dishes), the first cookbook published originally in Polish, in 1682. They include such sour soups as lemon borscht and "royal borscht", the latter made from assorted dried, smoked or fresh fish and fermented rye bran. ^[43] A manuscript recipe collection from the Radziwiłł family court, dating back to c. 1686, contains an instruction for making hogweed borscht mixed with poppy seeds or ground almonds. As this was a Lenten dish, it was garnished, in a trompe-l'œil fashion typical of Baroque cuisine, with mock eggs made from finely chopped pike that was partly dyed with saffron and formed into oval balls. ^{[20] [44]} An alternative recipe for the almond borscht replaced pickled hogweed with vinegar. ^[45]

Borscht also evolved into a variety of sour soups to the east of Poland. Examples include onion borscht, a recipe for which was included in a 1905 Russian cookbook, ^[46] and sorrel-based green borscht, which is still a popular summer soup in Ukraine and Russia. A Gift to Young Housewives by Elena Molokhovets, the best-selling Russian cookbook of the 19th century, ^[47] first published in 1861, contains nine recipes for borscht, some of which are based on kvass, a traditional Slavic fermented beverage made from rye bread. ^[48] Kvass-based variants were also known in Ukraine at that time; some of them were types of green borscht, while others were similar to the Russian okroshka. ^[7]

The significance of cabbage as an essential ingredient of борщ - as a Slavonic sour soup rather than " borscht" beet soup - is manifested in Ukrainian proverb: "without bread - [that's] not a lunch; without cabbage - [that's] not a borscht." ^{[j] [49]}

Before the advent of beet-based borscht, cabbage borscht was of particular importance. Made from either fresh cabbage or sauerkraut, it could be indistinguishable from the Russian shchi. ^[50] Indeed, the mid-19th century Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language defines borshch as "a kind of shchi" with beet sour added for tartness. ^{[51] [1]}

See also

• List of sour soups

Notes

References

Reference works