The chicken, or chicken and rabbit, or chicken and duck, are generally served separately, with some of the beets used to make the liquor, and with the addition of mushrooms, parsley, celery, onions, and sausages, raw or cooked, according to taste; and salt, pepper, and spices, according to taste also.
The poorer classes make this soup with water instead of beet-juice, and very often with mutton instead of beef; but proceed as described above in every other particular.
_Russian, or Uka._--The _uka_ is made in Russia with sterlets. It may be made here with the sturgeon of the lakes, or with salmon or trout.
Cut the fish in pieces about two inches long, and put them in salt water for one hour, and drain. Cut in small pieces two roots of parsley and two of celery, throw them into boiling water five minutes and drain them. Then fry them with a little butter till they turn yellow, when add a gill of broth, and boil gently till it becomes rather thick. Put the pieces of fish in also, add salt and pepper, to taste, cover the whole with fish-broth, boil gently till the fish is cooked, and serve warm.
Some _caviare_ may be added just before serving.
_Another, or Tstchy._--Put four pounds of beef in a soup-kettle (the poorer classes always use mutton), with a chicken or a duck, half a pound of smoked pork, same of smoked sausages, four carrots, four cloves, twelve pepper-corns, salt, two leeks, two onions, four stalks of parsley, and one of celery; cover the whole with fish-broth, and set on a good fire. Skim off the scum carefully, and boil gently till the whole is done. As soon as either the chicken or duck, etc., is done, take it from the kettle. When the whole is cooked, drain.
Put the liquor back in the kettle with a middling-sized head of cabbage cut in four, or about the same quantity of sour-krout, slices of carrots and onions, pearl-barley, _semoule_, or gruel; simmer about three hours, and it is done.
It is served in two ways: first, all the meat and vegetables are cut in small pieces and served with the broth as soup; second, the broth is served with the vegetables cut up, and the meat is served after and separately, as a _relevé_.
Nothing is thrown away but the pepper-corns and cloves.