Botvinya (Cold Sorrel and Fish Soup)

History

Botvinya is one of the old cold soups of the Russian table, named for the *botva* — the leafy tops of root vegetables. Greens such as young beet tops and sorrel are simmered, rubbed through a sieve and let down with kvass, then sharpened with cucumber, scallion, dill, and mustard or horseradish.

Molokhovets records the dish rather than originating it, and her version shows how it was meant to arrive at the table. A pound and a half of sorrel is cleaned, washed, cooked in its own juice and passed through a sieve. Cucumbers, spring onion ground with salt and sugar, mustard or grated horseradish and dill go in, and the whole is let down with two bottles of Bavarian kvass, with sour shchi if wanted. Then the parts are sent out separately: poached salmon, whitefish or crayfish tails on one dish, finely chopped ice on another. Sherry or champagne may be added.

That three-part service is the point of the dish, and it is why botvinya was reckoned incomplete without its fish.

What we could not stand behind is the history around it. Its attestation in a sixteenth-century household manual, its standing as a dish of the nobility, the praise-name it is often given, and the account of its decline in Soviet times, we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 funt sorrel
• 6 (~1 funt) fresh cucumbers
• 1 handful green onion
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard OR grated horseradish
• dill
• 2 butylka (bottle) Bavarian kvass
• 1 butylka (bottle) kislye shchi
• 1 1/2 funt / 25 tails boiled fish (salmon, seersalmon, whitefish) or crayfish tails
• sherry or champagne (optional)
• finely chopped ice

Instructions

1. Cook sorrel in its juice, sieve; add cucumbers, ground green onion with salt and sugar, mustard or horseradish, dill.
2. Thin with Bavarian kvass and some kislye shchi.
3. Serve with separately boiled fish or crayfish tails and chopped ice; optional sherry or champagne.