Sour ‘shchi’ is not just a soup, but also… a drink!

The drink was made from wheat and barley malt, wheat and buckwheat flour and flavored with honey and mint. In his book ‘Moscow and Muscovites’, Vladimir Gilyarovsky said that sour ‘shchi’ would be sealed in bottles that were used for sparkling wines. The fact is that, unlike regular ‘kvass’, they were highly carbonated and a regular container simply would not hold the pressure of the bubbling liquid. For example, the main protagonist of Chekhov's story ‘My Wives’ describes his chosen one as follows: "It was a bottle of good sour ‘shchi’ at the moment of uncorking."

The drink was very popular: it was refreshing and also got those who had been drinking alcoholic beverages the day before “back on their feet”. “Sour cabbage soup hits you in the nose and knocks out your hops!” they used to say about it. Incidentally, this is where the expression “professor kislykh shchey” (“professor of sour cabbage soups”) comes from: According to one version, this was the name given to a person who used the drink too often to cure a hangover.

Over time, the meaning of the expression changed and it began to refer to a “specialist” in all sorts of frivolous matters, ignorant, but always too willing to share their opinion.