Borshch and the Ukrainian table

Borshch (борщ) is a soup, usually deep red from beetroot, that UNESCO calls “an integral part of Ukrainian family and community life”. In English it is often spelled borscht. There is no single recipe: it changes from region to region, from season to season and from one family’s kitchen to the next. In 2022 UNESCO added the culture of Ukrainian borshch cooking to its list of heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.

What goes into borshch

UNESCO describes borshch as cooked with broth combined with beetroot, sugar beet or fermented beet juice, in a large pan or pot. Beetroot and cabbage are the main vegetables, and the stock is made with meat or fish, or with neither. There are many versions: UNESCO’s announcement of the listing mentions variations with mushrooms, fish or sweet peppers.

Borshch usually comes to the table with a spoonful of sour cream (смета́на) and something to eat with it: rye bread, or pampushky, small yeast rolls topped with garlic. Older descriptions also mention small filled pies, pyrizhky.

Where the name comes from

The word борщ first meant a plant, hogweed. Hogweed was once cooked into a sour soup, and over time other vegetables took its place, above all beetroot. The name stayed with the soup.

Blabober writes borshch because Ukraine’s official romanisation writes the letter щ as shch. Borscht is the usual English dictionary spelling, and it is the one UNESCO uses. You will also see borsch. For how Ukrainian names are spelled in English, see Stress and transliteration.

Borshch at the table

Traditionally, a soup or borshch was expected with the main meal of the day, and borshch has long been the favourite soup. It is an everyday dish, but it also belongs to special days. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine lists borshch among the dishes served on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Epiphany. In many Christian families the Christmas Eve supper is meatless, and for it there is a meatless borshch, cooked in water and soured with beet kvas, a fermented beet liquid.

Borshch also turns up in family rituals. In the Podillia region, the third day of a wedding has been called do nevistky na borshch, “to the daughter-in-law, for borshch” (до неві́стки на борщ).

The description in Ukraine’s UNESCO nomination puts the social side first. It calls borshch an expression of hospitality that brings people of all ages, genders and backgrounds to the same table. Women do most of the cooking, it says, but many men cook it as an everyday dish too. Recipes are passed down in families, with children helping in the kitchen, and borshch is praised in folk tales, songs and proverbs.

Many kinds of borshch

UNESCO notes that borshch reflects the local products of each region. The Encyclopedia of Ukraine names regional styles, such as Poltava, Kyiv and Galician borshch, and seasonal ones:

• Green borshch is built on sorrel (щаве́ль), a leafy plant with a sour taste. It is a spring dish, often served with hard-boiled egg and sour cream.
• Cold borshch, also called kholodnyk, is a summer soup of young beets, kvas, sour cream, herbs and eggs.
• Clear borshch is served as a clear broth.
• Meatless borshch, like the Christmas Eve one, is cooked without meat stock.

Borshch isn’t only Ukrainian. UNESCO calls Ukrainian borshch “the national version of borscht consumed in several countries of the region”. Ashkenazi Jewish cooks have their own borshch, often made without meat and eaten at Passover and Shavuot, and there are versions in Moldova, Romania, Georgia and elsewhere. In recent years borshch has also become a contested symbol in a wider dispute over cultural heritage between Ukraine and Russia; media reports trace that dispute to a 2019 tweet by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The UNESCO listing

On 1 July 2022, UNESCO inscribed the Culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. Ukraine had already entered borshch cooking on its national list of intangible heritage in 2020. Because of the war, Ukraine asked UNESCO to examine the nomination on a fast track, and the committee inscribed it “as a case of extreme urgency”. UNESCO’s reasoning was that the war threatened the practice itself: many people had been forced from their homes, and some could no longer cook borshch, grow the vegetables for it, or gather to share it.

What UNESCO lists is the culture of cooking borshch, the practice as people live it, rather than a recipe or the dish as such. UNESCO’s decision notes that the culture of borshch cooking is shared with other communities in the region, and that inscription “does not imply exclusivity or ownership”.

You can read the element page on UNESCO’s site.

Borshch in your Ukrainian

You may have met борщ already: it is in the food and drink vocabulary, and in the reading text Calling Mum, where Andriy asks for borshch and varenyky. When you offer or ask for some borshch, Ukrainian uses the genitive, борщу́, the way it does for other foods and drinks: see The genitive. To offer food politely, choose the form for ви or ти, as the politeness lesson explains.