in Tatar fashion.

That afternoon we made it convenient to take our dinner in town, on the
veranda of a restaurant which overlooked the busy Volga, with its mobile
moods of sunset and thunderstorm, where we compensated ourselves for our
unsatisfactory breakfast by a characteristically Russian dinner, of
which I will omit details, except as regards the soup. This soup was
_botvinya_. A Russian once obligingly furnished me with a description of
a foreigner's probable views on this national delicacy: "a slimy pool
with a rock in the middle, and creatures floating round about." The rock
is a lump of ice (_botvinya_ being a cold soup) in the tureen of
strained _kvas_ or sour cabbage. _Kvas_ is the sour, fermented liquor
made from black bread. In this liquid portion of the soup, which is
colored with strained spinach, floated small cubes of fresh cucumber and
bits of the green tops from young onions. The solid part of the soup,
served on a platter, so that each person might mix the ingredients
according to his taste, consisted of cold boiled sterlet, raw ham, more
cubes of cucumber, more bits of green onion tops, lettuce, crayfish,
grated horseradish, and granulated sugar. The first time I encountered
this really delectable dish, it was served with salmon, the pale,
insipid northern salmon. I supposed that the lazy waiter had brought the
soup and fish courses together, to save himself trouble, and I ate them
separately, while I meditated a rebuke to the waiter and a strong
description of the weak soup. The tables were turned on me, however,
when Mikhei appeared and grinned, as broadly as his not overstrict sense
of propriety permitted, at my unparalleled ignorance, while he gave me a
lesson in the composition of _botvinya_. That _botvinya_ was not good,
but this edition of it on the banks of the Volga, with sterlet, was
delicious.