Little Russian (Ukrainian) Borscht

History

Borshch is a beet soup rooted in the Eastern Slavic lands, and the modern beet-based dish is most closely associated with its Ukrainian form. Its name (борщ, shared across Eastern Slavic languages) originally meant hogweed, the cow-parsnip green that was the soup's early souring ingredient before being gradually displaced by others. Molokhovets, the great codifier of 19th-century Russian gentry cooking, does not invent borshch but records it — and tellingly gives it a whole section of several recipes, explicitly separating a 'Little-Russian' (Malorossiysky) borshch from a Polish one. 'Little Russia' was the imperial-era name for ethnically Ukrainian territory, so her own labelling preserves the dish's Ukrainian home; Soviet-era re-editions later swapped 'Little-Russian' for 'Ukrainian'. Her version reflects the old beet-sour tradition: the broth is built not on water but on strained kvass, thickened with flour, and enriched with cabbage, baked beet, grated raw beet juice for colour, and pieces of fried duck. That beet-sour itself is known in Slavic languages as kvas — made by fermenting sliced beetroot into a tangy liquid — which corroborates her kvass-built broth from an independent source. The dish's contested modern status is settled at the level of heritage: UNESCO inscribed Ukrainian borshch culture as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding in 2022.

Ingredients

• funt assorted meat (beef, pork, ham, sausage)
• stakans borscht kvass
• root vegetables bundle
• herb bundle
• leaves beet greens
• onion
• funt sour or fresh cabbage
• funt beetroot
• tomatoes
• stakan white beans
• potatoes
• stakan flour
• stakan sour cream
• grains allspice
• bay leaf
• ham and pork fat
• dill

Instructions

1. Cook a meat bouillon on borscht kvass with roots, beet greens, onion and spices; strain.
2. Prepare cabbage, baked shredded beet, tomatoes and separately boiled white beans.
3. Cook ham, fat and cabbage in the broth; add tomatoes, beans, potato and a flour thickening.
4. Add sour cream and portioned meat; finish with grated beet juice and dill in the tureen. Serve with cheese pastries or buns.