Chorba ( ; ) or shorba ( ; ) is a broad class of

stew A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been Cooking, cooked in Soup, liquid and served in the resultant gravy. Ingredients can include any combination of vegetables and may include meat, especially tougher meats suitable for ...

s or rich

soup Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot – though it is sometimes served chilled – made by cooking or otherwise combining meat or vegetables with Stock (food), stock, milk, or water. According to ''The Oxford Compan ...

s found in national cuisines across the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

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Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...

and

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. It is often prepared with added ingredients but is also served alone as a broth or with bread.

Etymology

The word ''chorba'' in English and in many Balkan languages is a loan from the

Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish (, ; ) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. ...

, which itself is a loan from Persian . The spelling ''shorba'' could be a direct loan into English from Persian or through a Central or South Asian intermediary. The word is ultimately a compound of meaning 'salty, brackish' and meaning 'stew, gruel, spoon-meat'. The former is from Parthian meaning 'salty', and the latter from

Middle Persian Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...

meaning 'gruel, spoon-meat'. The etymology can be definitively tied to Persian through the cognate ; in modern Persian, while evolved to mean 'broth, stew', simply means 'soup'. It is typical for Middle Persian word-final to either change to or to be dropped altogether in Modern Persian. The dialectal Arabic word or is also a loan from Persian and cannot be etymologically tied to meaning 'to drink'. That said, it is highly likely that

phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots f ...

occurred during the loaning of the word into Arabic, which would explain the orthographical difference. Chorba is also called (), (), (), (), ( sh-Cyrl, чорба), ( Somali), ( Romanian), (), ( / ), ( Turkish), (), () and ''shorba'' in ( Hindustani: / ). In the Indian subcontinent, the term is commonly used to mean gravy. It is a Mughlai dish and it also has vegetarian forms..

Types

Shorwa is a traditional Afghan dish which is a simple dish which is usually mixed with bread on the

dastarkhān A dastarkhān (Persian language, Persian / Urdu language, Urdu: دسترخوان, , , , , , , , ) or dastarkhwān is the name used across Central Asia and South Asia to refer to the traditional Dining room, dining space where food is eaten.Ken Al ...

. It is a long process and a pressure-cooker is usually used, as it reduces the process to 2 hours. The main ingredients for shorwa are potatoes, beans and meat. It is commonly served with Afghan bread. Ciorbă, as called in

Moldova Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a Landlocked country, landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of and population of 2.42 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. ...

and

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, consists of various vegetables, meat and herbs. Borș is a sour soup that is used in the Moldova region. There are several types of this dish, such as ciorbă de perișoare, leek soup, Romanian borscht, and borș de burechiușe.

Gallery

File:Shorwa.JPG, Traditional Afghan shorwa File:Chorba.jpg, Algerian chorba File:Begova Čorba (Baščaršija in Sarajevo, Bosnia).JPG, Bosnian ''begova čorba'' and somun bread File:Ready kurban chorba.JPG, Bulgarian Kurban chorba File:Shorpo.jpg, Kyrgyz shorpo File:Pileća corba.jpg, Serbian chicken čorba File:Ciorba.jpg, Romanian ciorbă File:Chorba frik algerienne.jpg, Algerian chorba frik

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corba Turkish soups Turkish words and phrases Albanian cuisine Arab cuisine Armenian cuisine Azerbaijani cuisine Bashkir cuisine Bosnia and Herzegovina cuisine Bulgarian cuisine Caucasian cuisine Georgian cuisine Greek cuisine Hungarian cuisine Indian cuisine Kazakh cuisine Kyrgyz cuisine Moldovan cuisine Pakistani soups and stews Romani cuisine Romanian cuisine Soviet cuisine Tajik cuisine Tatar cuisine Turkmen cuisine Uyghur cuisine Uzbekistani cuisine Iranian soups

Etymology

Types

Gallery

See also

Notes

References