Meat Okroshka

History

Okroshka is a cold summer soup of Russian origin, probably from the Volga region, built by 'crumbling' chopped ingredients into cold kvass — the name shares a root with the verb krošit', 'to crumble' or chop. Kvass, the low-alcohol fermented rye-bread drink documented in Rus since the Primary Chronicle's account of the year 988, was an everyday drink of common people and the classic base for cold soups such as okroshka and botvinya. The earliest written recipe appears in Nikolai Osipov's Old Russian Housewife (1790): assorted roasted meats with onions, cucumbers and sour cream, poured with cucumber brine, kvass, or sour shchi — a working-folk dish that only grew into a proper summer soup in the early 19th century and reached elite tables by mid-century. Molokhovets codifies that gentrified version rather than originating it: her meat okroshka heaps roast game, beef, veal, mutton, ham, corned beef and smoked tongue with cucumber, egg and herbs, then thins it with Bavarian kvass plus kislye shchi — here not cabbage soup but a bottled, sparkling fermented kvass-type drink of soured grain mash.

Ingredients

• full plate assorted roast/cooked meats (game, beef, veal, lamb, ham, corned beef, smoked tongue)
• fresh or salted cucumbers
• hard-boiled eggs
• green onion, dill, tarragon
• prepared mustard
• salt, sugar
• stakan sour cream
• butylka (bottle) Bavarian kvass
• butylka (bottle) kislye shchi (sour effervescent kvass drink)
• pepper, ice

Instructions

1. Cube the assorted meats, cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs; add chopped green onion, dill and tarragon.
2. Season with mustard, salt, sugar and sour cream.
3. Thin with 2 parts Bavarian kvass to 1 part kislye shchi; add pepper and ice; serve cold.