Sorrel soup

Sorrel soup is a soup made from water or broth, sorrel leaves, and salt. Varieties of the same soup include spinach, garden orache, chard, nettle, and occasionally dandelion, goutweed or ramsons, together with or instead of sorrel. It is known in Ashkenazi Jewish, Belarusian, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Armenian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian cuisines. Its other English names, spelled variously schav, shchav, shav, or shtshav, are borrowed from the Yiddish language, which in turn derives from Slavic languages, like for example Belarusian шчаўе, Russian and Ukrainian щавель, shchavel, Polish szczaw. The soups name comes ultimately from the Proto-Slavic ščаvь 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. In Russia, where shchi has been the staple soup, sorrel soup is also called green shchi. In old Russian cookbooks it was called simply green soup.

Sorrel soup usually includes further ingredients such as egg yolks or whole eggs (hard boiled or scrambled), potatoes, 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 broth instead of water. It is usually garnished with smetana (an Eastern European variety of sour cream). It can also be a kosher food. It may be served either hot or chilled.

Sorrel soup is characterized by its sour taste due to oxalic acid (called "sorrel acid" in Slavic languages) present in sorrel. The "sorrel-sour" taste may disappear when sour cream is added, as the oxalic acid reacts with calcium and casein. Some may refer to sorrel flavor as "tannic," as with spinach or walnuts.