Borscht is a classic soup dish that has a long and complicated history. It has many forms and can be spelled “borscht,” “borsch,” or “borshch.” For me and my family borscht is simply a comfort food. My mother’s side of the family is Russian, and my бабушка or baboushka/grandma often makes her traditional borscht as it is easy to make, and we all love it. She claims she makes the best borscht, and I may be biased, but I think she does too. My grandma’s borscht is different from the borscht you might typically see when you find a recipe on Google. Her recipe doesn’t call for beets which are used in many borscht recipes, and I wondered why so I did some digging. I found out that early borscht recipes didn’t use beets at all actually and used other vegetables like parsnips. According to baba, borscht was made with the vegetables you had in your garden. Whatever you had was good enough considering it is basically just a hearty vegetable soup.

Borscht with sour cream and buns
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/what-is-borscht

Even though we don’t know when and where borscht appeared exactly, borscht was technically not from Russia and more from Ukraine. Far back in history, Russia and Ukraine did not have the same borders that they do today, and Russia had encompassed a lot of it. Therefore, there can be a mix-up between Ukrainian and Russian borscht, even though they both started from the same thing. As people moved around, borscht recipes changed. This could explain why my baba’s recipe is different from other borscht recipes because they have changed and evolved not only from country to country but also family to family.

Don Cossacks in army uniform wait in line for borscht, 2006.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/russia-borscht

When it was first made, somewhere between the 5th and 9th centuries AD, in what is now Ukraine, it was a simple broth made from cow parsnips, chicken or beef broth, egg yolks, and cream. It was also mostly eaten by the rural poor and seen as peasant food up till the late 15th century. Things changed though as economic decline caused socio-cultural shifts in the 17th century and nobles had to eat things they normally wouldn’t have before. New ingredients were added depending on the crops available and the tastes of the nobility. The flavor changed as new ingredients were added and old ones were taken away. In some places, they used kissel, lemon, sorrel, kvass, and many more to replace parsnips. The main ingredient used to substitute parsnips though was cabbage which my grandma uses a lot of in her recipe.

Beet Borscht
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/summer-borscht-recipe-1947169

Beetroot was added in after all this experimentation in the late 17th or early 18th century by Ukrainians living under Russian rule. The recipes then started to consist of beetroot, cabbage carrots, bone broth, and sometimes sour cream and eggs. In the 19th century, potatoes and tomatoes were then added which was probably because, even though they had already been introduced to Western Europe from the Americas for a while, they had only just become common in the East. The use of tomatoes varied in borscht recipes and by the turn of the century, their increasing availability allowed them to be used instead of beetroot. This could explain why my baba’s recipe only includes tomatoes now as her ancestors probably transitioned from using beets to using only tomatoes.

My grandma’s borscht recipe in my mom’s cookbook

So, borscht history is complicated, and the soup has many different forms. The one thing that remains though is that this soup is hearty and pretty simple to make. I’ve included my mom’s version of my grandma’s borscht in a picture above where you can see just how simple her recipe is. I do think baba is hiding some secret ingredients from us though as no one makes it quite like her. Borscht may not seem like a spectacular meal to most, but it is special to me. It reminds me of cozy winter nights when the soup would warm our bodies and family was gathered around at the dinner table. Memories make our comfort foods special especially when it is connected to our culture and our family.

Bibliography

Koyfman, Steph. “A Cultural History Of Borscht.” Babbel Magazine, January 16, 2020.
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/what-is-borscht

Lee, Alexander. “From Russia with Borscht.” History Today, Volume 68 Issue 8 August 2018.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/russia-borscht

Sorokina, Anna. “How does Russian borscht differ from Ukrainian?” Russia Beyond, November 13, 2020.
https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/332994-russian-ukrainian-borsch

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Borscht.” Encyclopedia Britannica, July 25, 2019.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/borscht