Russian Dishes in America

By the mid-twentieth century, Americans were familiar with a few of the mainstays of Russian cuisine at both the high and low ends: blini and borscht, caviar and cabbage. The allure of Russian food continued into the 1960s, when one of the era’s most popular hostess dishes was beef Stroganoff. Most likely named after the nineteenth-century count Alexander Grigorievich Stroganov, the original beef Stroganoff was basically a French dish. Tenderloin of beef is thinly sliced and briefly cooked in a mustard cream sauce, then served with a garnish of crisp shoestring potatoes. The use of sour cream instead of sweet cream gives it a Russian flair. Beef Stroganoff began to appear on the menus of Continental restaurants throughout the United States. All too often, however, beef Stroganoff in its American incarnation became a thick stew with a heavy sour cream and tomato sauce suffocating a bed of limp noodles. Indeed, recipes for the home cook frequently substituted ketchup for the tomato sauce, resulting in a dish that eventually became a mainstay of mediocre cafeterias and boarding-school dining halls.