iberian borscht is eaten with boiled meatballs (frikadelki)[m] of minced beef and onion.[13][20] In Poland and parts of western Ukraine, borscht is typically ladled over uszka, or bite-sized ear-shaped dumplings made from pasta dough wrapped around mushroom, buckwheat or meat filling. Mushroom-filled uszka are particularly associated with Polish Christmas Eve borscht.[13][58][59][20]
Borscht, like any other soup in East Slavic cuisines, is seldom eaten by itself, but rather accompanied by a side dish. At a minimum, spoonfuls of borscht are alternated with bites of a slice of bread. Buckwheat groats or boiled potatoes, often topped with pork cracklings, are other simple possibilities,[13][55] but a range of more involved sides exists as well.
In Ukraine, borscht is often accompanied with pampushky, or savory, puffy yeast-raised rolls glazed with oil and crushed garlic.[56][13][60][20] In Russian cuisine, borscht may be served with any of assorted side dishes based on tvorog, or the East European variant of farmer cheese, such as vatrushki, syrniki or krupeniki. Vatrushki are baked round cheese-filled tarts; syrniki are small pancakes wherein the cheese is mixed into the batter; and a krupenik is a casserole of buckwheat groats baked with cheese.[13][20]
Pirozhki, or baked dumplings with fillings as for uszka, are another common side for both hearty and clear variants of borscht.[56][13][61] Polish clear borscht may be also served with a croquette or paszteciki. A typical Polish croquette (krokiet) is made by wrapping a crêpe (thin pancake) around a filling and coating it in breadcrumbs before refrying; paszteciki (literally, 'little pâtés') are variously shaped filled hand-held pastries of yeast-raised or flaky dough. An even more exquisite way to serve borscht is with a coulibiac, or a large loaf-shaped pie. Possible fillings for croquettes, paszteciki and coulibiacs include mushrooms, sauerkraut and minced meat.[13][62][63]
Borscht derives from a soup originally made by the Slavs from common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium, also known as cow parsnip), which lent the dish its Slavic name.[10]
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.[64][65]
The Slavs collected hogweed in May and used its roots for stewing with meat,[10] while the stems, leaves and umbels were 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".[66] This concoction was then used for cooking a soup characterized by a mouth-puckering sour taste and pungent smell.[67] 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."[n][68]
The earliest 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".[14] Simon Syrenius (Szymon Syreński), a 17th-century Polish botanist, described "our Polish hogweed"[o] as a vegetable that was well known throughout Poland, Rus', Lithuania and Samogitia (that is, most of the northern part of Eastern Europe), typically used for cooking a "tasty and graceful soup"[p] 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.[69]
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"[q] is the equivalent of "dirt cheap" (also attested as a calque in Yiddish and Canadian English),[70][71] whereas adding "two mushrooms into borscht"[r] is synonymous with excess.[72] 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 (sometimes with deviled eggs) from Lent till Rogation days.[73] It was uncommon on the royal table,[10] 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.[74]
When describing the uses of common hogweed, John Gerard,
a 17th-century English botanist, observed that "the people of [Poland]
and Lithuania use 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."[s][78] It may suggest that hogweed soup was 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[t][79][80] (from the Proto-Slavic root *kyslŭ, 'sour')[81][82] had been already mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years, a 12th-century chronicle of Kievan Rus',[83][84] and continued to be a staple of Ukrainian and Russian cooking until the middle of the 19th century.[85] In Poland, a soup based on diluted kissel became known as either żur[86] (from Middle High German sur 'sour')[87] or barszcz and later – to distinguish it from the red beetroot borscht – as barszcz biały 'white borscht'.[88]
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.[89] A manuscript recipe collection from the Radziwiłł family court, dating back to ca. 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.[67][90] An alternative recipe for the almond borscht replaced pickled hogweed with vinegar.[91]
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,[92] 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,[93]
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.[94]
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.[36]
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.[95] 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.[96][14] The significance of cabbage as an essential ingredient of borscht is manifest in the Ukrainian proverb, "without bread, it's no lunch; without cabbage, it's no borscht."[u][97]
Borscht, like any other soup in East Slavic cuisines, is seldom eaten by itself, but rather accompanied by a side dish. At a minimum, spoonfuls of borscht are alternated with bites of a slice of bread. Buckwheat groats or boiled potatoes, often topped with pork cracklings, are other simple possibilities,[13][55] but a range of more involved sides exists as well.
A bouillon cup of Polish clear borscht with a croquette and a gherkin on the side
Pirozhki, or baked dumplings with fillings as for uszka, are another common side for both hearty and clear variants of borscht.[56][13][61] Polish clear borscht may be also served with a croquette or paszteciki. A typical Polish croquette (krokiet) is made by wrapping a crêpe (thin pancake) around a filling and coating it in breadcrumbs before refrying; paszteciki (literally, 'little pâtés') are variously shaped filled hand-held pastries of yeast-raised or flaky dough. An even more exquisite way to serve borscht is with a coulibiac, or a large loaf-shaped pie. Possible fillings for croquettes, paszteciki and coulibiacs include mushrooms, sauerkraut and minced meat.[13][62][63]
History
Origin
Common hogweed, originally, the principal ingredient of borscht
The Slavs collected hogweed in May and used its roots for stewing with meat,[10] while the stems, leaves and umbels were 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".[66] This concoction was then used for cooking a soup characterized by a mouth-puckering sour taste and pungent smell.[67] 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."[n][68]
The earliest 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".[14] Simon Syrenius (Szymon Syreński), a 17th-century Polish botanist, described "our Polish hogweed"[o] as a vegetable that was well known throughout Poland, Rus', Lithuania and Samogitia (that is, most of the northern part of Eastern Europe), typically used for cooking a "tasty and graceful soup"[p] 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.[69]
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"[q] is the equivalent of "dirt cheap" (also attested as a calque in Yiddish and Canadian English),[70][71] whereas adding "two mushrooms into borscht"[r] is synonymous with excess.[72] 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 (sometimes with deviled eggs) from Lent till Rogation days.[73] It was uncommon on the royal table,[10] 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.[74]
Diversification
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.[75][76][77]
Rye meal mixed with water and left to sour is the main ingredient of Polish white borscht.
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.[89] A manuscript recipe collection from the Radziwiłł family court, dating back to ca. 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.[67][90] An alternative recipe for the almond borscht replaced pickled hogweed with vinegar.[91]
Cabbage-based borscht may be indistinguishable from the Russian shchi.
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.[95] 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.[96][14] The significance of cabbage as an essential ingredient of borscht is manifest in the Ukrainian proverb, "without bread, it's no lunch; without cabbage, it's no borscht."[u][97]
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