Nobody seems to know where the word borscht came from. The best guess is that it is a combination of schti (Russian cabbage soup) and buryak (beetroot in Ukrainian).  It is first mentioned in the legend about the two-month siege of the Ukrainian fortress Rohatyn by the Crimean offshoot of the Turkish army in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Trying to feed several hundreds of hungry people, including women and children, the Cossacks, defenders of the fortress, collected every edible vegetable (root vegetables, as it was winter) and put them into meat broth. When they ran out of meat, they went vegan and kept cooking only vegetables: carrots, potatoes, beets, cabbage, and beans. It was warm and filling, and it sustained the population for two months. Unfortunately, the defense was broken, Rohatyn was taken, and many captives were transported to a slave market in Constantinople.

Among those captives was…