Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A chilled soup made with sorrel, onions, lemon juice, eggs, and sugar and served with sour cream.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A kind of borscht made with sorrel (or occasionally lemongrass)
  • noun Sorrel (the plant)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Yiddish shtshav, from Polish szczaw.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Yiddish שאַוו (shav), from Polish szczaw

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Examples

  • I had the good sense not to come up with the Sybil/Mina Project, dedicated to my deceased mother and her incomparable borcht, brisket, schav, sour pickle and blintzes recipes, thereby retaining the rights to perpetuity of my nobodiness.

    Sybil Adelman Sage: Memo to Julie Powell of Julie & Julia 2009

  • I wish I could sentence all the demented government agents who dreamed this up-and any teacher politically-correct enough to inform on a child-to thirty days solitary confinement, on a diet not of bread and water, but of schav and blood sausage.

    On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2008

  • I will admit that falafel is tastier than schav, though.

    ISTV | Jewschool 2007

  • I knew my borscht from my schav and my cannoli from my zeppole.

    A must read for all… | YepYep - Your Daily Waste Of Time 2006

  • This week the Chocolate Lady from In Mol Araan is making sorrel soup, also called Shtshav, schav, or szczaw, and named for the amazingly flavorful sorrel which is the main ingredient.

    Weekend Herb Blogging #41 Recap Lots of New Herb Bloggers! Kalyn Denny 2006

  • I was prescient and the good sense not to come up with the Sybil/Mina Project, dedicated to my deceased mother and her incomparable borcht, brisket, schav, sour pickle and blintzes recipes, thereby retaining the rights to perpetuity of my nobodyness.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com 2009

  • Anything is tastier than schav… and yes, my whole family is from Europe, my mother’s family is mostly from Latvia, but I don’t think that using Sephardi/Israeli pronunciation is evidence that I’ve abandoned that heritage.

    ISTV | Jewschool 2007

Comments

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  • Sorrel soup, also shchav, shav, shtshav.

    January 25, 2009

  • Curious. Do you know the origin of this word? In Slovene, š�?avje (pronounced "shchau-ye") refers to weeds or other low-growing dense wild growth, so I'm wondering if this word (and perhaps the soup) is of Slavic origin.

    January 25, 2009

  • Isn't it it Щ�?ВЕЛЬ in Russian? I remember buying jars of it (the vegetable) in the supermarket. Perhaps the soup has a slightly different name.

    January 25, 2009

  • You are right. According Dahl, щавель (shchavel') is Rumex acetosa - common sorel. The Slovene definition I looked up just described the plant as a "low, wild, densely growing vegetation of little value", which I took to mean "weeds". But when I now checked a Slovene-English dictionary, š�?avje is translated as "sorrel, dock". I must say, I am not familiar with that sense of "dock".

    January 26, 2009

  • Tasty stuff, I loved it :-)

    January 26, 2009

  • Polish scczaw, sorrel. I grow sorrel in my gardens just for a regular schav fix. The sour leaves and petioles are a great accent in mixed greens salads as well.

    December 28, 2010

  • Consider the choices you have

    Selecting a soup of the slav.

    There's bigos, quite thick,

    Or pick one that's quick

    And dine on a fresh bowl of schav.

    May 18, 2017

  • I adore sorrels.

    Don't we have some soup lists around here?

    May 18, 2017

  • In old Russian cookbooks it was called simply green soup.23

    May 19, 2017