 Borscht 's westward expansion was less successful ; Germans used to scoff at the soup along with other East European fare . What helped familiarize Western Europe with borscht was the practice of Russian emperors , as well as Russian and Polish aristocrats , to employ celebrated French chefs , who later presented their own versions of the dish as a foreign curiosity back in France . One of the first French chefs to do so was Marie @-@ Antoine Carême , who worked briefly for Emperor Alexander I in 1819 . In his take on borscht , the original Russian soup served only as inspiration for an extravagant haute cuisine dish with an air of eastern exoticism . Apart from vegetables and beet sour , his recipe calls for a roast chicken , a fried chicken , a duck , a piece of veal , an oxtail , a marrow bone , one pound of bacon , and six large sausages , and suggests serving with beef quenelles , deviled eggs , and croûtons . Auguste Escoffier , Carême 's apprentice , who was mostly fascinated by the soup 's vivid ruby @-@ red color , simplified his master 's recipe , while also securing the place of potage bortsch ( " borscht soup " ) in French cuisine . Urbain Dubois and Émile Bernard , both of whom had been employed at Polish aristocratic courts , presented borscht to the French public as a Polish soup ; their cookbook , La cuisine classique , published in 1856 , contains a borscht recipe under the descriptive name , potage au jus de betteraves à la polonaise ( " Polish @-@ style beet @-@ juice soup " ) , which had been changed to potage barsch à la polonaise by the third edition in 1868 . In 1867 , beetroot borscht was served , along with herrings , sturgeon , coulibiac , Pozharsky cutlets and vinaigrette salad , at a Russian @-@ themed dinner at the International Exposition in Paris , strengthening its international association with Russian culture . 
