Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from Russian Nobles. 12 most popular recipes in 12 years of Grantourismo. Copyright © 2021 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Palace Kitchen

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My authentic Russian beef Stroganoff recipe is the best beef Stroganoff you’ll taste. It makes the deliciously rich, creamy braised beef and mushroom dish cooked centuries ago in the grand kitchen of St Petersburg’s glorious pink Stroganov Palace. Better known as a retro classic of the 1970s, beef Stroganoff is rich in history and incredibly comforting. It’s the dish you need to make right now.

I’m sharing my authentic Russian beef Stroganoff with you for the holidays, which I always use as an excuse to cook the family recipes of the Russian-Ukrainian side of my family. Because apart from eating, there are few things more comforting than cooking, especially the dishes of our childhoods. And who doesn’t need food that comforts right now?

My hearty Russian beef Stroganoff recipe makes one of my best Stroganoff recipes and best mushroom recipes. If you’re a lover of beef Stroganoff, I also have recipes for chicken Stroganoff, meatball Stroganoff, mushroom Stroganoff, and pork Stroganoff, which uses the Chinese velveting technique, as well as traditional Stroganoff accompaniments, crispy shoestring fries, mashed potatoes and buckwheat kasha.

Stroganoff is a dish I’ve adored since I first developed an insatiable curiosity about food and cooking, watching my rosy-cheeked grandmother spend hours every day preparing piroshki, cabbage rolls and chicken kotleti; stuffing cucumbers into enormous jars to make dill pickles; and stirring massive pots of borscht on the stove in her light-filled kitchen in the red-brick home my grandfather built in Blacktown, Sydney.

I love to use traditional holidays such as Orthodox Easter and Christmas as an excuse to roll up goluptsi (cabbage rolls), fold dumplings around fillings for pelmeni and vareniki, and let Stroganoff simmer as I channel my long-departed loved-ones and the food rituals I fondly recall being raised in a Russian-Ukrainian-Australian household in Sydney’s western suburbs in the 1970s.

But before I tell you more about my traditional beef Stroganoff recipe, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is supported by its readers. If you’ve cooked this dish or any of my Russian-Ukrainian family recipes, our Cambodian recipes, or any recipes at all on Grantourismo, and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo so that we can keep creating delicious recipes and food stories for you.

For instance, you could make a small donation to our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon for as little as the price of a coffee, or, if you’re planning a trip, you could use our affiliate partner links, below; if you make a booking, we may earn a commission but you won’t pay extra.

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Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Palace of Russian Nobles

Holidays for me are all about cooking and eating the food from my childhood growing up in a Russian-Ukrainian-Australian family in Western Sydney in the 1970s and 80s. The traditional food we cooked and ate included this retro-classic, which my mum used to make, which was very fashionable in Australia in the Seventies.

Beef Stroganoff was an aristocratic Russian dish with peasant roots. There were mushrooms and beef stews centuries before this Russian beef Stroganoff recipe was thought to have been invented by a French chef. It’s much more likely that beef Stroganoff was a more rustic traditional stew that was refined in the Stroganov dynasty’s St Petersburg palace kitchen.

Beef Stroganoff would later go on to travel the world with Russian émigrés following the Bolshevik revolution, and then with refugees of World War II like my grandparents, becoming popular everywhere from China and Hong Kong to Australia and the Americas.

So while Terence has been baking, I’ve been cooking Russian-Ukrainian comfort food, including this Russian beef Stroganoff recipe, and other traditional family recipes that I’ve been testing for the Russian-Ukrainian-Australian cookbook and family memoir that I’ve been writing.

I made the dish pictured above yesterday and we’re eating leftovers tonight with my mum’s potato gratin. Tomorrow I’m going to put a big pot of soup on in the morning (probably this mushroom soup with handmade noodles) then Terence and I will spend the afternoon making more of my Russian favourites: potato and caramelised onion-stuffed vareniki and minced beef and pork-filled pelmeni.

On the side, I’ll serve a crisp Russian garden salad with fresh dill, sweet tomatoes, and crunchy red radishes, lettuce and onions. Leftovers will get eaten on Sunday morning, when I make fried Russian dumplings for brunch on the balcony. My stomach is rumbling thinking about the meals ahead.

But let me tell you about my Russian beef Stroganoff recipe, which will make you a deliciously rich and creamy rendition of the braised beef and mushroom dish that was cooked in that grand kitchen of the Stroganov Palace. And, yes, the Stroganov family spell their name with a ‘v’. It’s thought the ‘ff’ came when it was written on menus in French, as in ‘boeuf Stroganoff’ which was a fashionable thing to do in Imperial Russia.

If you’ve been to the enchanting city of St Petersburg, one of my favourite cities in the world, and you did a canal cruise, you probably would have passed the splendid pale pink palace on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and the Moika River Embankment. It’s hard to miss.

My Russian beef Stroganoff recipe is based on a combination of memories and recipes: firstly and primarily, my memories of eating the beef Stroganoff that my mum and my baboushka used to make, because unfortunately our hand-written family recipes are with mum in Australia and we’re in Cambodia and mum isn’t so good with a phone these days. Hopefully I’ll finally get hold of the recipes when I’m reunited with mum.

I grew up on mum’s classic beef Stroganoff of melt-in-the-mouth slices of beef in a creamy mushroom, sour cream and mustard gravy, served with mashed potatoes. Aside from the mushrooms and onions, mum’s beef Strog (Australians shorten everything!) wasn’t too far removed in flavour from the earliest documented Russian beef Stroganoff recipe in Elena Molokhovets’ A Gift to Young Housewives and a beef Stroganoff we tried in Moscow.

Secondly, my recipe is still influenced by those earliest documented Russian beef Stroganoff recipes, which for many are the most authentic beef Stroganoff recipes, by Elena Molokhovets in A Gift to Young Housewives dating to 1861, and Pelageya Aleksandrova-Ignatieva’s beef Stroganoff recipe in Practical Basics of Culinary Arts, dating to 1899. My grandmother had copies of both cookbooks, which my mum still has. While trying to replicate my family recipes, I’ve still endeavoured to remain loyal to those early recipes.

Lastly, I’ve also drawn inspiration from the beef Stroganoff that travelled to China and East Asia with Russian émigrés (which explains my inclusion of a quintessentially Asian ingredient) and the beef Stroganoff that we tasted with mum at Café Pushkin in Moscow when we took her to Europe after dad died. It was delicious and definitely resembled mum’s Strog more than any others we tasted. But while it’s considered by many restaurant critics to be the best beef Stroganoff in Russia, although I think my family’s beef Stroganoff was better.

As tasty as it is, Molokhovets’ recipe for ‘Govjadina po-strogonovski s gorchitseju’ or ‘beef in the Stroganoff style with mustard’, as it was called, includes tender beef, allspice, butter, salt, flour (to coat the beef), sour cream, bouillon, pepper, and Sareptskaja mustard. Her recipe didn’t list paprika, which, for me, is an essential ingredient in beef Stroganoff, nor the other condiment that I love to include and that’s my (not-so) secret ingredient: fish sauce.

While mushrooms and onions may well have featured in the original beef Stroganoff dish served in the sumptuous dining room of the pink Stroganoff Palace in St Petersburg in the late 1700s, they didn’t appear in the early beef Stroganoff recipes for another century or so.

That doesn’t mean Russians weren’t already eating beef stews or beef and mushroom stews – there are detailed instructions for preparing beef stews using every bit of the cow in Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible, first published in 1533 – and mushrooms also feature heavily, fresh, dried, pickled, boiled, baked, and fried in butter; in pies, pastries, patties, fritters, tarts, dumplings, soups, and stews.

In 1899, Pelageya Aleksandrova-Ignatieva’s beef Stroganoff recipe in her Practical Guide to the Basics of Culinary Arts called for beef tenderloin, butter, tomato paste, sour cream, beef broth, fume (an aspic-like bone broth), sausage, onion, salt, pepper, and Kabul sauce. But still no mushrooms in her Stroganoff.

That Kabul sauce – or Soy Kabul sauce or Mogul sauce, as it was also called – was listed as an ingredient in an Olivier salad recipe published in the March 1894 issue of the Russian culinary magazine Наша пища or Our Food, edited by M Ignatiev, and I’m going to tell you more about Kabul sauce in my meatball Stroganoff recipe.

As for when mushrooms appeared in the gently spiced mushroom gravy that distinguishes beef Stroganoff? I’m going to tell you all about that in my mushroom Stroganoff post. Links to both of those Stroganoff recipes at the top of the post.

Tips to Making this Authentic Beef Stroganoff Recipe

I only have a few tips to making my beef Stroganoff recipe as it’s actually very easy. If you’re not Russian or Ukrainian, not of Russian-Ukrainian heritage, and haven’t eaten your way through Russia or Ukraine, my traditional beef Stroganoff might be different to the modern beef Stroganoff recipes you’ve cooked.

Of course that goes without saying if your experience of beef Stroganoff was the paler ultra-creamy American-style beef Stroganoff made from canned mushroom soup. I’m sure that must bring back a lot of nostalgic childhood memories for many of our readers.

My family always used fresh mushrooms in a traditional beef Stroganoff. Back in my great-grandmother’s day, when my baboushka was a child, it would have been wild mushrooms that they foraged from the forest around their village not far from Odesa, in the land we now know as Ukraine. My great-grandmother was born when it was still Odessa, during the Russian Empire, and my baba was actually born on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution.

If you can, use brown mushrooms or wild foraged mushrooms or whatever mushrooms you can source. I actually prefer shiitake mushrooms, as they’re abundant and affordable here in Southeast Asia, and I love their earthy taste and meaty texture.

My beef Stroganoff is still creamy, but mostly from sour cream or smetana, not thickened cream. I use half as much cream as sour cream, and sometimes I skip the cream completely. My beef Stroganoff is also more richly spiced than most, as I use the allspice originally used in the earliest beef Stroganoff recipes that is often left off the ingredients list of modern recipes.

As delicious as it is, Molokhovets’ recipe for ‘beef in the Stroganoff style with mustard’ or Govjadina po-strogonovski s gorchitseju lists tender beef, allspice, butter, salt, flour (to coat the beef), sour cream, bouillon, pepper, and Sareptskaja mustard.

While I adore Sareptskaja mustard, and you can buy it online (link above), sadly, we can’t get Amazon deliveries here, so I use wholegrain mustard. Molokhovets’ recipe didn’t list paprika nor the Asian condiment I love to include my Stroganoff.

Ground paprika is a must as far as I’m concerned – try to get hold of a sweet Hungarian paprika – as is fish sauce, which I love in my beef Strog: it adds umami, not a fishy taste. While I’ve said fish sauce is optional, below, as I know not everyone loves fish sauce as much as I do, please do try my beef Stroganoff with fish sauce.

When it comes to fish sauce, I recommend Thailand’s Megachef for a top quality fish sauce, as its sodium levels are always consistent. Megachef is easy to find throughout Asia and in Australia, UK and Europe, however, not in the USA apparently, where our American friends mostly recommend Red Boat Fish Sauce.

I always serve my beef Stroganoff with either shoestring fries (beef Stroganoff’s traditional side), creamy mashed potatoes (Terence’s recipe is the best) or buckwheat kasha. Links to all of those recipes above. Some enjoy rice or pasta with their Stroganoff.

A fresh Russian garden salad on the side is absolutely essential, as is a dish of dill pickles.

I’d love to know what you think if you make my authentic Russian beef Stroganoff recipe. And if you do enjoy it, please let us know in the comments below, and do browse this collection of our best stew recipes for more hearty, comforting dishes.

Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe

Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from Russian Nobles. 12 most popular recipes in 12 years of Grantourismo. Best Beef Recipes. Copyright © 2021 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Palace of Russian Nobles

This Russian beef Stroganoff recipe makes a deliciously rich and creamy rendition of the beef and mushroom dish once cooked in the grand kitchen of the Stroganoff Palace in St Petersburg. My beef Stroganoff recipe is based on a combination of my Russian family recipe, and the earliest documented Russian Stroganoff recipes by Elena Molokhovets in A Gift to Young Housewives, dating to 1861, and Pelageya Aleksandrova-Ignatieva’s Practical Basics of Culinary Arts, dating to 1899. Serve it with mashed potato or shoestring fries as the Russians do.
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Marinating Time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours 40 minutes
Course Main
Cuisine Russian
Servings made with recipe6 People
Calories 275 kcal

Ingredients
 
 

  • 800 g beef steak - tenderloin or fillet
  • 1 tbsp allspice - ground
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp cooking oil
  • 2 white onions - roughly sliced
  • 250 g brown mushrooms or shiitake mushrooms - sliced in halves or thirds depending on size
  • ¼ tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp ground paprika
  • 200 ml sour cream
  • 100 ml cream
  • 150 ml beef stock
  • 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce - optional
  • ½ tsp salt or to taste - optional

Instructions
 

  • Two hours before you plan to start cooking, trim the beef of fat and, cutting against the grain, slice the beef into pieces of around 2cm x 5cm.
  • Transfer the beef to a sealed container and sprinkle half a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of allspice onto the beef, rubbing it into the meat to ensure it is evenly distributed, then refrigerate for two hours.
  • In a cast iron skillet or large pan, gently fry the onion slices in a tablespoon of butter until translucent and soft, then set aside.
  • In the same skillet or pan, add another tablespoon of butter, the mushrooms, black pepper, paprika, and a splash of olive oil, then turn up the heat and sauté the mushrooms until soft, then set aside with the onions.
  • In a wok, heat the cooking oil until hot, then stir-fry the beef on high heat for a minute or so until brown then remove from heat to rest.
  • To the skillet or pan you cooked the onions and mushrooms in, add the sour cream and cream, turn the heat on low and stir until warm, slowly adding the beef stock, stirring to combine. Return the onions and mushrooms to the pan, then the mustard, stir to combine, and gently simmer.
  • Add the beef pieces to then pan, then the fish sauce, stir to combine well, and taste, adding the salt if needed. (Sometimes I add more all spice at this point).
  • Simmer for ten minutes or so, then serve on individual plates, garnished with fresh dill, and with sides of crispy shoestring fries, mashed potato or potato gratin, gherkins, and additional sour cream.

Nutrition

Calories: 275kcalCarbohydrates: 12gProtein: 5gFat: 25gSaturated Fat: 12gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2gMonounsaturated Fat: 8gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 64mgSodium: 599mgPotassium: 609mgFiber: 3gSugar: 7gVitamin A: 1828IUVitamin C: 22mgCalcium: 70mgIron: 1mg

Published 2 April 2018, Last Updated 22 March 2024

Please do let us know if you make this Russian beef Stroganoff recipe as we’d love to know how it turned out for you. You can share your experience and tips or ask questions in the comments below, or tag us on Instagram.

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

26 thoughts on “Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Palace Kitchen”

  1. Made this last night for the family with mash potatoes and carrots on the side. The meat was tender and I only added a little fish sauce as the stock (from stock cubes) was already pretty salty. Everyone loved it and there was no leftovers! When it gets colder here it will be a weekend favourite. Thanks!5 stars

  2. Hi Janice, so pleased you enjoyed it. Re the fish sauce – if you use a good quality fish sauce, one that you’d use for a dipping sauce rather than for cooking, it should add umami rather than saltiness. We’ve got a whole collection here, LOL, but for this I use my best quality Vietnamese fish sauce, which is quite old and from a small producer. It’s big and rounded and almost caramel-like. It’s a fantastic winter dish, especially with a potato gratin. Thanks for dropping by!

  3. This really is the best beef stroganov recipe I’ve ever tried! I made your mash to go with it. Oh my. We were hoping to have leftovers, but no such luck it was that good. Would love your shoestring fries recipe.5 stars

  4. Hi Helen, thank you for the kind words. So pleased you enjoyed it – and Terence’s mash. Terence is the fries expert and I have been trying to persuade him to do a recipe as matchstick fries are the traditional palace pairing. I will him nicely again and let you know when the recipe is up ;) Thanks for taking the time to stop by and leave a comment :)

  5. This is the best! Grew up on mum’s strog made with tinned mushroom soup so was never a fan. Thought I’d try this and now hooked. Sorry winter is over.5 stars

  6. The best stroganoff I ever had was at a school cafeteria in the Ural mts of Russia. This was fabulous! I added more mustard and pepper. Loved it!5 stars

  7. Hi Christine, how wonderful! I never got to the Urals, but my Papa spoke of the region with tremendous adoration for the lofty mountains, towering forests and tranquil lakes. Still dream of travelling there, and more widely in Russian and the Stans one day. I also add more mustard, pepper and spices, but I appreciate that not everyone has the palate for spices we do. There’s more spice in the chicken stroganoff, which has more Eastern/Asian influence. Please do let us know if you make that. Spasiba for taking the time to drop by and leave a comment!

  8. I like the fact that this recipe does not inlude flout, but that also makes me wonder.. does that mean the stroganoff will be less thick and more watery?

  9. Nikola, did you mean ‘flour’? If so, no, the sauce will reduce when simmering. If it’s not thick enough, just turn the heat up high a little for a while until it is, then reduce to simmer again. You can see from the pic that it’s not watery :) I would love to know how it turns out for you and what you think of it. This is a Russian-Australian recipe after all, not 100% Russian, but I tried hard to achieve something between my memory of baboushka’s dish, the Stroganoff we enjoyed in Russia, and the historic recipe. I like to think I have the best of all three, but always welcome feedback. Spasiba for taking the time to leave a comment.

  10. Larissa, your babouchka would be proud this is really the most delicious beef stroganoff I have ever eaten. I cook this regularly and my kids and grandkids love it so much. It is even better than my own family recipe! Spasiba, Larouchka!5 stars

  11. Natalia, spasiba! Thank you so much for dropping by to share that! You’ve brought tears to my eyes. So appreciate it! Thank you so much! Please drop by and visit us again. Lara x

  12. This recipe turned out great. There’s so many recipes out there that use ingredients like red wine and a roux to thicken the sauce when it just needs reducing. I’ll drink my red wine with the dish, thanks! Made shoestring fries, but they were a little greasy, I don’t think I had the oil temperature right. Yes, that’s a hint for you to do a recipe! Did your family serve it with mash instead? I think it might go better to soak up the sauce. Thanks!5 stars

  13. Ha! Ha! And a glass of red goes very nicely with it! Terence is actually experimenting with shoestring fries so we should get a recipe up soon. My grandmother made deliciously greasy fries too :) But, yes, we mostly ate it with mashed potatoes. Thanks for the kind words and taking the time to drop by and leave a comment :)

  14. Agree with the others, by far the most delicious beef strog I’ve made and I’ve made a lot, it’s a family favourite. Will try some of your other strog recipes. I see you have a chicken strog, which looks great. Thank you.5 stars

  15. Your version is very authentic and I am looking forward to trying it. A very long time ago I saw the original recipe in larousse Gastronomique which included marinating the beef in white wine for 24 hours first. I no longer have that book and was wondering if you are aware of any aromatics I should add to the wine. Thanks.

  16. Hi Ron, why don’t you try my recipe and see what you think? :)

    We’ve never marinated our beef in wine for Stroganoff, however, I did search for a Larousse recipe, as I was curious, as I haven’t seen the book in years. You can access them on both the Open Library and Internet Archive.

    While this Bœuf Stroganov recipe says it takes only 30 minutes (“15 min. de préparation, 15 min. de cuisson”), it includes white wine and it calls for 12 hours of marinating in the wine, with a bay leaf and sprig of thyme. So you’ve got some very subtle aroma there.

    I used Google Translate, which makes for an amusing translation. I like the use of ‘blaze’ here: “Heat the cognac, pour it into the frying pan and blaze.”

    The ingredients are: 800 g beef tenderloin 4 onions 3 shallots 1 large carrot 1 bay leaf 1 sprig of thyme 75 cl of white wine 200 g of mushrooms from Paris 80 g butter 1 glass of cognac liqueur 15 cl thick fresh cream salt, pepper

    Instructions:
    1. Cut the beef tenderloin into 2.5 cm long strips; salt and pepper.
    2. Peel and chop the onions and shallots, peel the carrot and cut it into small dice. Put these vegetables in a terrine. Add the crumbled strips of fillet, bay leaf and thyme. Pour the white wine. Let marinate for at least 12 hours in the cool, covered, stirring the meat from time to time.
    3. Clean the mushrooms and cut them into strips.
    4. Drip and blot the meat. Cut the marinade in half and pass it.
    5. In a frying pan, brown the mushrooms with 30 g of butter, then drain them and keep them warm.
    6. Jet the fat, wipe the frying pan. Put in it to heat the remaining 50 g of butter, add the meat and sauté it for 5 minutes on high heat, turning it over non-stop so that it does not burn.
    7.Heat the cognac, pour it into the frying pan and blaze. Mix and then, using a skimmer, take out the meat and arrange it in the serving dish. Keep warm.
    8.Supply the mushrooms in the frying pan, add the marinade and fresh cream. Stir over high heat to thicken the sauce, adjust the seasoning and top the meat. Serve very hot.

    Please let me know if you make it. Unfortunately we can’t get “mushrooms from Paris” here :)

    Thanks for dropping by!

  17. Hi Stewart, it is a great recipe :) We went with metric when we launched Grantourismo in 2010 because we’re Australians raised with metric, the rest of the world uses metric and we’ve got readers from right around the world, and we just assumed the USA would eventually convert to metric. Bakers in the USA use metric, as it’s easier to do conversions and scale recipes, and many restaurant kitchens in the USA use it, too. Hopefully the US will make the shift to metric at some point.

    Having said that, we do have a large readership from the USA, so we have been looking at adding your system as well. It’s just a lot of work as we have thousands of posts and it will have to be done manually. Google also has a fantastic conversion tool — if you just search for a conversion it pops up at the top of the search results.

    I’ve done the conversions for you, below, and as we’re not baking, I’ve rounded them up.

    800 g / 1.75 pound beef steak tenderloin or fillet
    250 g / .55 pound brown mushrooms or button mushrooms sliced in halves or thirds depending on size
    200 ml / 6.75 oz sour cream
    100 ml / 1.41 oz cream
    150 ml / 2.12 oz beef stock

    I hope you enjoy it!

  18. Lara this is the best beef Stroganov recipe and one of the only truly authentic Stroganov recipes on the Internet. My baba also add more spices as you have. I tried to find a recipe like this for many years. I really don’t like those creamy American Stroganov recipes with no flavour. We enjoy this so much with Terrence’s shoestring fries. Spasiba.5 stars

  19. Hi Vera, awwww thank you so much. I’m so pleased to hear that your baboushka also used lots of spice. I’m not a fan of the ultra creamy Stroganovs either. Terence is also happy to know you make the fries. Thanks so much for taking the time to drop by and let us know :)

  20. I have been making beef strog for years and thought it was from my hungarian roots. My daughter wanted to study Russia and I am fascinated to learn the history of one of our favorite dishes. She will be thrilled to know that we will be making her favorite as part of her Russia studies. Thank you for the history lesson and recipe!5 stars

  21. Hi Adrienne, how wonderful! I am so pleased to hear this! I have recently made some more historical connections that may have influenced the dish’s development in the Stroganoff family palaces that I’ll be adding to this post soon. A lot of my Russian family recipes on Grantourismo have a little history in them, as I love the stories behind dishes, so do browse those, too, when you both have time. Food is a wonderful way through which to explore history and culture.

    I’m also launching a separate Russian-Ukrainian recipe site that will be loaded with history and stories that you and your daughter may be interested in. I’m currently at my mum’s in Australia and she’s translating a lot of recipes for me from my grandmother’s old Russian cookbook and at the same time we’re reminiscing as we go through family photos and she’s recollecting stories her parents and grandmother told her that I’m then cross-checking with historical events. I’ll be sharing that sort of stuff on the site.

    Having said all that, I do remember Hungarian Stroganoff from our time in Budapest. It was more red in colour due to the use of Hungary’s wonderful smoky and sweet ground paprika, as well as fresh red capsicum (bell peppers). Does the recipe you use make a redder Strog?

    While Hungary was never part of the Soviet Union, as you probably know, there was a long period of about 45-50 years of Soviet influence in Hungary. Soviet occupation that began during World War 2 and didn’t end until the 1989 revolution in Hungary – Hungary was also a member of the Warsaw Pact – so during that period there would have been cultural influence, as well as cultural resistance, of course.

    But there would have been even earlier cultural influence and exchange. For instance, prior to that period, the Russians were publishers of cookbooks and recipe magazines that were translated and widely circulated throughout Europe.

    However, there were even earlier historical connections and relationships between the nobles of the Russian Empire and the Habsburg’s Austro-Hungarian Empire, and even a marriage between a Romanov princess and Archduke Joseph of Austria/Palatine of Hungary. Royals and nobles always influenced culture, especially fashion and food, so the dish may well have travelled to Hungary then.

    Best of luck to your daughter with her Russian Studies and thanks for taking the time to drop by and leave a comment :)

  22. I have made an “Americanized version” of Beef Stroganoff for many years but this was the first time I used Allspice and fish sauce and boy did it make a difference. This is the best version of Stroganoff I have ever had, if not one of the best dishes of any kind I have had. Thanks so much for sharing it with the world!5 stars

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