Borscht derives from an ancient soup originally cooked from pickled stems, leaves and umbels of common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), an herbaceous plant growing in damp meadows, which lent the dish its Slavic name.

Depending on the recipe, borscht may include meat or fish, or be purely vegetarian; it may be served either hot or cold, and it may range from a hearty one-pot meal to a clear broth or a smooth drink.

In some versions, smoked meat may be used for the stock and the tartness may be obtained or enhanced by adding lemon juice, dill pickle brine, or dry red wine.

The meat variant is typically made from beef brisket (pork is never used[34]) and cabbage, while the dairy one is vegetarian, blended with sour cream or a mixture of milk and egg yolks.

[27] It is served refrigerated, typically over finely chopped beetroot, cucumbers, radishes and green onion, together with halves of a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled with fresh dill.

[51] In Romanian and Moldovan cuisines, a mixture of wheat bran or cornmeal with water that has been left to ferment, similar to, but less cloudy than that used in Polish white borscht, is called borș.

[54][55] The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian version of borscht is a hot soup made with beef stock, green peppers and other vegetables, which may or may not include beetroots, and flavored with chopped red chili and fresh cilantro.

[20] In Poland and parts of western Ukraine, borscht is typically ladled over uszka, or bite-sized ear-shaped dumplings made from pasta dough wrapped around mushroom, buckwheat or meat filling.

[65][69][20] In Russian cuisine, borscht may be served with any of assorted side dishes based on tvorog, or the East European variant of farmer cheese, such as vatrushki, syrniki or krupeniki.

The said soup—with aforementioned fermented hogweed concoction used—was characterized by a mouth-puckering amount of sourness in its taste, while its smell was described as pungent[76] As the Polish ethnographer Łukasz Gołębiowski wrote in 1830, "Poles have been always partial to tart dishes, which are somewhat peculiar to their homeland and vital to their health.

[79] Another early written reference to the Slavic hogweed soup can be found in Domostroy (Domestic Order), a 16th century Russian compendium of moral rules and homemaking advice.

[82] For the professors of the University of Kraków, who led a monastic way of life in the 17th century, hogweed borscht was a fasting dish which they ate regularly from Lent till Rogation days.

Stanisław Czerniecki, head chef to Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, included several borscht recipes in his Compendium ferculorum (A Collection of Dishes), the first cookbook published originally in Polish, in 1682.

[99] A manuscript recipe collection from the Radziwiłł family court, dating back to c. 1686, contains an instruction for making hogweed borscht mixed with poppy seeds or ground almonds.

As this was a Lenten dish, it was garnished, in a trompe-l'œil fashion typical of Baroque cuisine, with mock eggs made from finely chopped pike that was partly dyed with saffron and formed into oval balls.

A Gift to Young Housewives by Elena Molokhovets, the best-selling Russian cookbook of the 19th century,[103] first published in 1861, contains nine recipes for borscht, some of which are based on kvass, a traditional Slavic fermented beverage made from rye bread.

[17] Auguste Escoffier, Carême's apprentice, who was mostly fascinated by the soup's vivid ruby-red color, simplified his master's recipe, while also securing the place of potage bortsch (lit.

[130] Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, borscht's popularity spread beyond its Slavic homeland, largely due to such factors as territorial expansion of the Russian Empire, Russia's growing political clout and cultural stature, and waves of emigration out of the country.

[137] Jews from the Pale of Settlement, an area that stretched along the western edges of the Russian Empire and included much of present-day Ukraine, brought with them Ukrainian variety of borscht with beetroot.

In the 1930s, when most American hotels refused to accept Jewish guests due to widespread anti-Semitism, New York Jews began flocking to Jewish-owned resorts in the Catskill Mountains for their summer vacations.

[139] Gold's borscht consists of puréed beetroots seasoned with sugar, salt and citric acid;[140] it is usually blended with sour cream and served as a refreshing beverage, more aptly described as a "beet smoothie".

All ingredients for the space borscht (which include beef, beetroots, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, parsley root, and tomato paste) were cooked separately, then combined one by one in strictly controlled order, sterilized, packed into tubes, sealed airtight and autoclaved.

[144] However, with urbanization and mass construction of Khrushchyovka type housing, borscht would be affected; there would be no comfortable place to make own days-long dishes with "kvass" and sour foods, in a tiny apartment.

According to a traditional belief, the soul of the departed either feeds on or is carried up to heaven by puffs of steam rising from bowls of borscht and other hot dishes, such as blini, porridge, boiled potatoes or freshly baked bread.

[145][137] In the region of Polesye, straddling the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, the same steaming-hot dishes, including borscht, are given as an offering to the souls of deceased ancestors during the annual semi-pagan remembrance ceremony known as Dzyady or Forefathers' Night.

Youths used to celebrate Holy Saturday, the last day of the fast, with a mock "funeral" of the white borscht, in which a pot of the soup was either buried in the ground or broken, sometimes—to the crowd's amusement—while being carried by an unsuspecting boy on his head.

[76] In Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, vegetarian borscht served with sour cream and boiled potatoes on the side, known as peysakhdiker borsht, is considered an essential dish during the Passover period.

[2] Cold borscht blended with sour cream is also popular on Shavuot (Feast of Weeks), a holiday customarily associated with dairy foods, observed in late May or early June.

[154] In 2020 Ukraine began the process to have borscht recognised as an element of the country's intangible cultural heritage, an initiative supported by chefs and food writers such as Marianna Dushar.

[161] This approach was criticized by William Pokhlebkin, a preeminent Russian food writer, who unequivocally described beet-based borscht as one of the "dishes of Ukrainian cookery" which "have entered the menu of international cuisine".