[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

When a dish is as simple as beef Stroganoff it’s hard to sift through the claims of invention. It’s sliced beef in sour sauce. Cut away all the variations and that’s what’s left. Not exactly splitting the atom.

Every town in Italy that can attach an “-ese” to the end of its name invented Minestrone. “Before us, there was no boiling water with vegetables in it!” they boast. “Dopo di noi, il diliziosa!” It’s chaos. Multiple Italian claims would have plagued meat sauce too, but the wily Bolognese, as a condition of submitting to Papal rule in 1506, insisted that all pasta sauces made with beef and tomatoes throughout Christendom be referred to as “Bolognese,” increasing their opportunity to sneer “That’s not real Bolognese.”

Alexander Grigorievich Stroganov (1795-1891) is likely who the dish is named for though there are other claimants. One story tells that Grigory Alexandrovich Stroganov’s (1770-1857) chef made a dish of minced meat because his master’s teeth were either gone or in such a state that chewing was out. Another says a chef attending to Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov (1774-1817) served julienned beef in sauce because the meat was so frozen it could only be shaved into ribbons. But it was Alexander Grigorievich Stroganov (1795-1891) who may have popularized the dish in Odessa, freeing it from aristocratic trappings, letting it mingle with common dishes of sliced beef in sour sauce where it could sneer, “That’s not real me.”