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Featured articleBorscht is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 19, 2016.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 8, 2016Good article nomineeListed
June 5, 2016Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 22, 2016.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that common hogweed was originally the main ingredient of borscht?
Current status: Featured article

Featured Article review needed?

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This article does seems to have deteriorated. Pinging Kpalion, Ian Rose, Edwininlondon, Nikkimaria, Piotrus, Sainsf, Casliber. Valereee (talk) 15:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, just seen this. Someone needs to quantify and list specific problems and we can work from there. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee Mind elaborating on how it deterioratd? I see some unreferenced content; pinging non-IP editors who added it (rewrote it... WRT is not perfect): Kpalion has been pinged already; @TaivoLinguist. Errr, that's about it. From what I can tell, 80% of unreferenced content has been added by IPs) in the last 2-3 years, 15% by Kpalion c. 2015-2016, and maybe 5% by TavioLinguist (in the etymology and at the very end?). If nobody cares to reference it, we can probably just remove all unreferenced content citing WP:V, there's not much of it. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A tag has been placed in the lead stating there is no evidence for its use in orthodox rituals. It is mentioned in body of text but would be good to discuss before removing tag as am not familiar myself. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This sentence Sometimes, borscht can be found as barszcz (a Polish word for 'borscht') or borshch (transliteration of Cyrillic "борщ"), although these are still foreign words in English and not natively used. - if these spelling variants have been not uncommonly seen/used, would be worth citing them but I suspect they are pretty rare (???) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For me, with food, the issues of similar-names-but-different-foods and of similar-foods-but-different-names, especially when complicated by transliteration, are always a question. Sometimes even sources that are digitalized and can be machine-translated don't help. Sauces get translated into dips, soups or even stews, for instance. And with the names of food dishes, you always get into gastronationalism issues: if in Bulgaria it's called борш and is rendered in English as borsh, by God we have to include borsh. My default setting on things like barszcz and borshch and borsh is to include if we can find a citation, until/unless the sheer number of those inclusions becomes a negative. Which, no surprise, whenever we approach the Balkans it often does. :D Valereee (talk) 11:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, @Piotrus, thanks for coming in. Yes, it's partially the additions by IPs over the past few years, and it's a little complicated by the fact many of these additions/changes are for terms that are transliterated and quite a few seem to be for dishes with some sort of name similarity but which really aren't what we mean in English by "borscht", which is a sour soup with beets as the primary ingredient. Plus I think basically the entire 'Namesakes without beets section' could be spun off (drafted at Draft:Slavic sour soups), as other than the various gastronationalistic edits it seems to have attracted much of the attention.
I have no objection to simply removing what's not cited. I guess that leaves us with checking any unreverted additions to make sure we catch any that were added in front of a ref, making it look like they are sourced? Sorry for my ignorance here, there just aren't that many food-related FAs that draw heavy POV editing, so I haven't done this before. Is there some easier way to do that instead of simply checking each diff so see if it included a source, and if it didn't, checking the source to see if it supports the assertion? Valereee (talk) 10:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee It's an interseting topic but not something I am very familiar with, sadly. I'll just note for now that żur is sometimes known in Poland as "white borscht" (it has no beets). And yes, for most folks, borscht means a red beet soup, of course. I support creation of Slavic sour soups article, which could be linked from here, żur, and like. (But, borscht is not sour... IMHO it's sweet? Żur is sour, yes). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:07, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sour basically refers to the fact it often contains some fermented or pickled ingredient. The beets themselves are sweet, but borscht is often made from preserved (traditionally that means pickled or fermented, which are types of preservation that can easily and safely be done at home without a pressure cooker) beets. When borscht is made from fresh or canned beets, in modern recipes some sour ingredient (like whey or pickled beet juice) is often called for to get the tangy flavor, but a modern borscht is probably much sweeter than what you'd have eaten every day with brown bread a few hundred years ago. Valereee (talk) 11:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And, hm, on zur. I'm wondering if Sour cereal soup and Draft:Slavic sour soups are actually the same thing? @TaivoLinguist? Valereee (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
+1 to that question; didn't know there's an article on zur-like Slavonic soups. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 11:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, serious answer. That article is bad, because there was a separate article on "zur". BUT! Sour cereal soup is related to the soups from the "diversification" part in general, not just 1 variant of zur. Feel free to grab that article (I would restore "zur" article with all the interlinks in the meantime). 81.89.66.133 (talk) 12:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
NONONONONONONONO! Don't mix moden beet borscht with ancient soups we happen to know via XI Xcentury books, such as Podarok molodym khozaikam. 2A00:1370:81A2:4024:3FDA:1D04:A236:18DA (talk) 19:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
>Sour basically refers to the fact it often contains some fermented or pickled ingredient.
>often
>often
No. It HAS a sour TASTE. What you try to descrive is a soup merely reminiscent of Slavonic sour soups via some wonky ingridien'. OK, fine. Once I have the time, I will enrich you draft on "Slavic" sour soups with the information you need to stop confusing borSCHT with the actual soups of the ancient Slavs. 2A00:1370:81A2:4024:3FDA:1D04:A236:18DA (talk) 19:37, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appear to have touched a nerve. :) IP, please do enrich the draft. I'm always interested in the history of foods. Valereee (talk) 23:26, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1t's OK, thanks for the emotional support :) 81.89.66.133 (talk) 07:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, it wasn't for me. As for the enriching, I would like to "overflow" the draft with extra information on how the beet borscht belongs to the {a;R;r;A;y} of Slavonic sour soups first. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 07:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATE: turns out, they used to call parsnips "polevoy borshch". (see my comment in "draft:Slavic sour soups") 81.89.66.133 (talk) 12:25, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Профессор кислых щей ПИНГ!!! 81.89.66.133 (talk) 09:13, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I wrote the article back in 2016, I used a broad definition: borscht is everything that gets called "borscht", "borshch", "barszcz" or something similar in any language, which meant that almost any sour soup could be included in that definition. Under this approach, the beet borscht is the best known among many variaties of borscht. But now I think that a different approach might work better: to employ a narrower definition where borscht is always red and always contains beets. The "Namesakes without beets", "Precursors" and "Diversification" subsections could then be moved to an expanded "Etymology" section (perhaps renamed to something like "Origin and variants of the name"), which would focus on the evolution of the word "borscht" and what it may refer to in languages other than English. The rest of the article would only deal the beet borscht. — Kpalion(talk) 12:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree per, quote, "this is ENGLISH Wikipedia". The etymology in English - "borSCHT" - is Yiddish and this explains why the brew known in Polish as barszcz ukrainsky that is soup of Borscht Belt.
  • As for the brew of Russian cuisine, I would assume "борщ" should have been shchi svekolnye all along. The key difference is, not many Russians add sour stuff into the brew (since Russian smetana is not really sour; it's somewhat sweet, even).
81.89.66.133 (talk) 12:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree with what? — Kpalion(talk) 22:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I first arrived at this article it was pretty straightforward--beet-based borscht as known in the English-speaking world that originated in Ukraine. Then after 2014, some real-world events began the process of IP edit warring over the origin, the nature, and the name. Thankfully it has quieted down over the past year. I heartily agree that the sour Slavic soups that may or may not have names related etymologically to "borscht" and often contain no beets should have their own article. My wife is Ukrainian so I don't know anything about those soups and appreciate the work that has gone into the draft article. The draft that I last looked at was ready to publish as far as I could tell. I also agree that in the English Wikipedia, all those Slavic transliterations that aren't actually words in English don't belong here and just clutter it up. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 09:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
>Then after 2014, some real-world events began the process of IP edit warring over the origin, the nature, and the name.
  • Fun fact: a number of "борщ"-related news articles published here in Russia have attracted my attention to the problem of борщ indeed. I was thinking about the part where there are several slavic sour soups which are united under "борщ" umbrella term; and got met with the idea of borscht qua borscht by TaivoLinguist. Hope I will have some time to finish the "Slavic sour soups" draft to line up some distinct differences obvious to a Slav yet not visible to a person thousand kilometers away.
TL;DR: I had had this very "SOMEONE'S WRONG ON THE INTERNET" moment before I took the time to edit the article. It is waaaay to large to quickly skim thru. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 08:23, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
>Thankfully it has quieted down over the past year.
I mean, seriously.
We had a "borscht qua borscht" vs "plethora of dishes under the same name" discussion/argue. Now, with renowed argumentation, it's easier to see how the article is was supposed to point out towards the origins of a certain style of beet soup rather than originis of anything-soupy-and-with-beet-but-often-without mish-mash. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 12:01, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Botvinya is a word in Russian for an kind of beet soup

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In short: botvinya is (more like "was" though) a word in Russian for an kind of soup, and it was commonly made with beets. I guess this is the dish that was already ubiquitous in Russian Empire before it was re-labelled as borscht.

Full story: I remember now. In Russian, there is a rare word for a beet soup with leaves. The word for it is "botvinnik" "botvinya". And the word for the leaves plucked from vegetables - beets or not - is "botva" in Russian.

Thing is, "botvinnik" botvinya beet soup was a common thing in Russia ever since, whenever it was labelled "borscht" or had its "botvinya" name. And, I GUESS, it is not related to the "ancient hogweed soup" since it's not about souring the soup, it's about the "botva", e.g. plucked leaves from growing vegetables.

  • The kicker is, this word nowadays belongs to the dictionary of forgotten words: see ISBN 978-5-98986-208-5
  • And an additional kicker is, the soup was believed to be a "zakuska", a small dish.

I think that explains the mystery why beet soups are so common in Russia all while everyone refers to the soups using the same name that is used for borscht. The "botvinnik botvinya ---> borshch" renaming could have taken place somewhere in the USSR, which is relativly easy to write off as "some writers' mix-up".

Thought it could have been an intersting trivia for future years of disputes, whether borscht-as-a-dish is "stolen" or not.

Anyway, I am about to abandon my Wikipedia procrastination so you may not hear from me soon. Goodbye. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 09:04, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 4 November 2024

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remove Czech from Associated cuisine 109.81.165.109 (talk) 10:21, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 22:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the request was aimed towards the infobox on the dish, the "Associated cuisine" section - it lists Czech [cuisine] as associated with borscht, while it's not really the case with the beet soup (the "borscht qua borscht"). 81.89.66.133 (talk) 12:07, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and removed it because "czech" literally doesn't appear anywhere in the article. But someone probably ought to go through the entire list of associated cuisines in the infobox and check. I'll leave myself a w-ping for a few days, but if someone wants to do that before I circle back, it would be a kindness. :) Valereee (talk) 16:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought...I just removed that section of the infobox. It was silly long. Just because a dish is known in a cuisine doesn't mean it's associated with that cuisine. We should only add back those that we can find a source saying "associated with" for a cuisine. Valereee (talk) 16:55, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Simply put: I agree with you on this matter. Thanks a lot. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 06:22, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Just because a restaurant in Prague has "borsch" as one of 10 available soups on a menu doesn't warrant its inclusion here as "part of Czech cuisine". My Ukrainian wife makes borsch here in Utah. That doesn't make it "American". --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:49, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
>American
>capitalized "American"
Oh. That reminds me: in Runglish, origin-related words (such as the ones with "-ian") are not capitalized because... it haven't been a common thing in Russian (a.k.a. русский язык) for a long time. Added an entry to Runglish. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 09:54, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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