Sorrel soup

Sorrel soup

Sorrel soup with egg and croutons
Alternative names	Green borscht, green shchi, green soup
Type	Soup
Region or state	Eastern Europe
Serving temperature	Hot or cold
Main ingredients	Water or broth, sorrel leaves, and salt

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, Latvian,Lithuanian, Romanian, 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 Polish szczaw. The latter together with its Eastern Slavic cognates (Belarusian шчаўе, Russian and Ukrainian щавель, shchavel) 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 (along with or rather than borscht) has been the staple soup, sorrel soup is also called green shchi. In old Russian cookbooks it was called simply green soup.