borshch a beetroot soup which can be served either hot or cold. It is essentially a dish of E. Europe, this region being taken to include russia, lithuania, poland (where the name is barszcz) and, most important, the ukraine. Ukrainians count it as their national soup and firmly believe that it originated there. They are almost certainly right, especially if (as suggested under börek) one can properly apply to such questions the principle followed by botanists: that the place where the largest number of natural variations is recorded is probably the place of origin of a species. There are more kinds of borshch in the Ukraine than anywhere else; these include the versions of Kiev, Poltava, Odessa, and L’vov.
