Sorrel soup is made from

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

broth Broth, also known as bouillon (), is a savory liquid made of water in which meat, fish, or vegetables have been simmered for a short period of time. It can be eaten alone, but it is most commonly used to prepare other dishes, such as soups ...

sorrel Sorrel (''Rumex acetosa''), also called common sorrel or garden sorrel, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the family Polygonaceae. Other names for sorrel include spinach dock and narrow-leaved dock ("dock" being a common name for the genus ''Ru ...

leaves, and

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

.Екатерина Авдеева. Ручная книга русской опытной хозяйки. СПб, 1842 Елена Молоховец. ''Подарок молодым хозяйкам''. 1-е издание, 1861, с. 65 Varieties of the same soup include

spinach Spinach (''Spinacia oleracea'') is a leafy green flowering plant native to Central Asia, Central and Western Asia. It is of the order Caryophyllales, family Amaranthaceae, subfamily Chenopodioideae. Its leaves are a common vegetable consumed eit ...

garden orache ''Atriplex hortensis'', known as garden orache, red orache or simply orache (; also spelled orach), mountain spinach, French spinach, or arrach, is a species of plant in the amaranth family used as a leaf vegetable that was common before spin ...

chard Chard (; '' Beta vulgaris'' subsp. ''vulgaris'', Cicla Group and Flavescens Group) is a green leafy vegetable. In the cultivars of the Flavescens Group, or Swiss chard, the leaf stalks are large and often prepared separately from the leaf b ...

nettle Nettle refers to plants with stinging hairs, particularly those of the genus '' Urtica''. It can also refer to plants which resemble ''Urtica'' species in appearance but do not have stinging hairs. Plants called "nettle" include: * ball nettle ...

, and occasionally

dandelion ''Taraxacum'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. The scientific and hobby study of the genus is known as taraxacology. The genus has a near-cosmopolitan distribu ...

, goutweed or

ramsons ''Allium ursinum'', known as wild garlic, ramsons, cowleekes, cows's leek, cowleek, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek, Eurasian wild garlic or bear's garlic, is a bulbous perennial flowering plant in the amaryllis family, Ama ...

, together with or instead of sorrel. It is known in

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

, Belarusian, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian,

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

, Georgian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian cuisines. Its other English names, spelled variously schav, shchav, shav, or shtshav, are borrowed from the

Yiddish language Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

, which in turn derives from Slavic languages, like for example Belarusian шчаўе, Russian and Ukrainian щавель, ''shchavel'', Polish ''szczaw''. The soup name comes ultimately from the Proto-Slavic ''ščаvĭ'' for sorrel. Due to its commonness as a soup in Eastern European cuisines, it is often called green borscht, as a cousin of the standard, reddish-purple beetroot

borscht Borscht () is a sour soup, made with meat stock, vegetables and seasonings, common in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. In English, the word ''borscht'' is most often associated with the soup's variant of Ukrainian origin, made with red b ...

. In Russia, where shchi (along with or rather than borscht) has been the staple soup, sorrel soup is also called green shchi.Щи
/ref>Щи
/ref> In old Russian cookbooks it was called simply green soup. Sorrel soup usually includes further ingredients such as

egg yolk Among animals which produce eggs, the yolk (; also known as the vitellus) is the nutrient-bearing portion of the egg whose primary function is to supply food for the development of the embryo. Some types of egg contain no yolk, for example bec ...

s or whole eggs (hard-boiled or scrambled),

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

es, carrots, parsley root, and rice. A variety of Ukrainian green borscht also includes beetroot. In Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian cuisines, sorrel soup may be prepared using any kind of

instead of water. It is usually garnished with smetana, an Eastern European variety of

sour cream Sour cream (sometimes known as soured cream in British English) is a dairy product obtained by fermenting regular cream with certain kinds of lactic acid bacteria. The bacterial culture, which is introduced either deliberately or naturall ...

. It may be served either hot or chilled. Sorrel soup is characterized by its sour taste due to

oxalic acid Oxalic acid is an organic acid with the systematic name ethanedioic acid and chemical formula , also written as or or . It is the simplest dicarboxylic acid. It is a white crystalline solid that forms a colorless solution in water. Its name i ...

(called "sorrel acid" in

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

) present in sorrel. The "sorrel-sour" taste may disappear when sour cream is added, as the oxalic acid reacts with

calcium Calcium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar to it ...

and

casein Casein ( , from Latin ''caseus'' "cheese") is a family of related phosphoproteins (CSN1S1, αS1, aS2, CSN2, β, K-casein, κ) that are commonly found in mammalian milk, comprising about 80% of the proteins in cow's milk and between 20% and 60% of ...

. Some may refer to sorrel flavor as "tannic," as with spinach or walnuts. File:Borscz zelenyj ukr.jpg, Green borscht with egg and sour cream File:Green borscht spinach smetana.jpg, Green borscht made with spinach instead of sorrel and with potatoes File:Борщ зелений.jpeg, Ukrainian green borscht including both sorrel and beetroot

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sorrel Soup Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine Cold soups East Slavic cuisine Belarusian cuisine Latvian soups Soviet cuisine Polish soups Russian soups Ukrainian soups Vegetable dishes

See also

References