Historically, borshch used to be the national food in Ancient Rome, where cabbages and beets were specifically cultivated for that purpose. However, various sources suggest the modern version of borshch appeared around the 15th century.
One of the popular but unproved legends says the first-ever borshch was cooked by the Cossacks in 1637 during a two-month siege of the Azov fortress in Southern Russia, which was occupied by the Turkish army. Feeding four thousand Cossacks in a camp was problematic, so they collected anything edible they could find and threw it all together. Everyone liked this thick and nourishing mix of vegetables and meat, and came up with the name borshch, supposedly making an anagram of a popular fish soup called “shcherba”.