Tyurya, sometimes known as murtsovka, is a traditional

bread soup Bread soup is a simple soup that mainly consists of stale bread. Variations exist in many countries, and it is often eaten during Lent. Both brown and white bread may be used. The basis for bread soup is traditionally either meat soup or veg ...

in the Russian cuisine, sometimes considered a variant of okroshka. It consists of chunks of bread, often stale or semi-stale, or dried/baked into ''sukhari''

biscuits A biscuit is a flour-based baked and shaped food product. In most countries biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be s ...

hardtack Hardtack (or hard tack) is a simple type of dense biscuit or cracker made from flour, water, and sometimes salt. Hardtack is inexpensive and long-lasting. It is used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods, commonly during long sea voy ...

, soaked in a flavorful liquid or, alternatively, plain water, with some vegetables (chiefly onion, garlic or sauerkraut) and vegetable oil added and flavored with salt and pepper. The base liquid could be anything that can be consumed cold, because unlike most other bread soups, tyurya was prepared and consumed without heat. Kvass was historically the most popular base for tyurya, due to it being cheap, plentiful and flavorful enough. A

dairy A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing (or both) of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on ...

base, like plain or sour

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digest solid food. Immune factors and immune-modulati ...

whey Whey is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a byproduct of the manufacturing of cheese or casein and has several commercial uses. Sweet whey is a byproduct resulting from the manufacture of rennet types of hard ...

kefir Kefir ( ; also spelled as kephir or kefier; ; ; ) is a fermented milk drink similar to a thin yogurt or ayran that is made from kefir grains, a specific type of mesophilic symbiotic culture. The drink originated in the North Caucasus, in pa ...

was considered fancy and was generally prepared for children, the elderly or the infirm. It is, along with '' pokhlyobka'', a traditional

Lenten Lent ( la, Quadragesima, 'Fortieth') is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, ...

soup. Made with black bread, it was a

staple food A staple food, food staple, or simply a staple, is a food that is eaten often and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard Diet (nutrition), diet for a given person or group of people, supplying a large fraction of ...

of the Russian

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Synonyms and etymology

The dish has many synonyms, both general Russian and local: tyura, turka, Тюря // Толковый словарь живого великорусского языка : в 4 т. / авт.-сост. В. И. Даль. — 2-е изд. — Санкт-Петербург : Типография М. О. Вольфа, 1880—1882. tubka, tyupka, murtsovka,Мурцовка
// Исторический словарь галлицизмов русского языка mura,'' Добродомов И. Г.'
Этимологические заметки (тюря и мура)
/ref> ruli, kawardachok. In case the bread is added in the form of

rusk A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread. It is sometimes used as a teether for babies. In some cultures, rusk is made of cake, rather than bread: this is sometimes referred to as cake rusk. In the UK, the name also refers to a w ...

s (rus.''suhari''), it is often called a «suharnitsa». In the Tula province, a tyurya made of bread, onions, kvass and vegetable oil was called uvanchiki. The Russian name "tyurya" occurred from Türkic * tӱ̄r (from tyur, tyir) "crumb": "a meal of crushed bread with water". From the Russian language, the word "tyurya" has penetrated into the Latvian ( lv, čuruls – food from water, bread and onions) and Belarusian ( be, цура́, цю́ра, along with other synonyms — ''мурцоўка, рулі, мочёнки, мочёунки'').'' Добродомов И. Г.'
Три невыявленных тюркизма русского словаря (тюбяк, тюря, бандура)
/ref> "Murtsovka" comes from the French ''morceaux'': "pieces". "Mura" - from the Finnish ''muru'': "crumb".

History and preparation

In the most popular and probably original variant, tyurya was the cheap, cooling and filling meal for a peasant in the field. Several slices of day-old

rye bread Rye bread is a type of bread made with various proportions of flour from rye grain. It can be light or dark in color, depending on the type of flour used and the addition of coloring agents, and is typically denser than bread made from wheat ...

, diced

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the oni ...

and some fresh herbs were combined in a bowl and soaked with a liberal amount of kvass, then flavored with salt and optionally pepper. Some

vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of fruits. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, ...

was often added, historically

linseed Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, ''Linum usitatissimum'', in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. Textiles made from flax are known in ...

, mustard or cheaper

olive oil Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea''; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking: ...

, as

sunflowers ''Helianthus'' () is a genus comprising about 70 species of annual and perennial flowering plants in the daisy family Asteraceae commonly known as sunflowers. Except for three South American species, the species of ''Helianthus'' are native to ...

only become popular in Russia in the late nineteenth century. When a family could spare some dairy, or when someone was ill, the festive, dessert tyurya, considered more palatable and easily digestible, was prepared, which was sweetened with

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

or, later,

white sugar White sugar, also called table sugar, granulated sugar, or regular sugar, is a commonly used type of sugar, made either of beet sugar or cane sugar, which has undergone a refining process. Description The refining process completely remove ...

References

General references

Tyuryas

William Pokhlyobkin William Vasilyevich Pokhlyobkin (August 20, 1923 – April 15 (burial date), 2000) (russian: Ви́льям Васи́льевич Похлёбкин, Viliyam Vasilievich Pokhlyobkin) was a Soviet and Russian historian specializing in Scand ...

, "Cuisines of our peoples", in Russian {{Russian soups Cold soups Russian soups Bread soups Rye-based dishes Lenten foods Staple foods Military food Cultural history of World War II Soviet Union in World War II