"Correct ingredients" for standard recipes

[ChrisTaylor]

I was flipping through a couple of books just now in search of dinner. And, hey, beef stroganoff c/o The Cook's Book. Haven't had that in a while. I noticed that the recipe doesn't include paprika. Now that's interesting. A season or so ago on the Australian version of MasterChef, some of the competitors were set the challenge of cooking stroganoff. They weren't given a recipe: it was assumed that they'd know how to make it. Easy enough, right? Everyone knows the basics: fillet steak or some other tender cut (as opposed to, say, rump or flank), onions, cream, mushrooms, paprika. Every competitor used paprika in their stroganoff. Every competitor got told off for using paprka. Paprika supposedly has no place in stroganoff.

Of course, if you look up stroganoff in Larousse Gastronomique, it does include paprika. Please to the Table, a decent-ish Russian/Central Asian/Eastern European cookbook I've got, also includes paprika. Most versions of the dish I've seen include paprika. The first recipe I can recall seeing without paprika is, well, this one (Marcus Wareing's).

I've no idea if stroganoff 'really' should include paprika--I think it benefits from it, so my stroganoff always includes paprika--but this raises an interesting point. Even on eGullet, I've seen debate about the 'correct' ingredients for dishes such as cassoulet. Where do you you look to find out what the 'correct' ingredients are you a dish? Does it really matter, so long as the results taste good? Some people get really offended if they feel you've deviated from the make-up of the original dish--I mean I have problems with the idea of vegan cheesecake (vegan? well then, it's not bloody cheesecake, is it?) or, say, the very western touch of adding red wine to doro wot (which is common in a lot of recipes found online). How closely do you try to adhere to the list of 'correct' ingredients when you're making traditional fare?

[nickrey]

As far as I've observed "correct" or its sister "authentic" comprises how my grandmother/yaya/oma/nonna/etc cooked it.

Masterchef Australia has been wrong on so many levels when they've gone down the "authentic" route, it's almost as bad as their "pronounciation" (sic).

Edited October 3, 2011 by nickrey (log)

[ChrisTaylor]

I die a little bit inside every time one of them hams up a Hollywood Italian or Spanish accent.

[Jaymes]

So, let me get this straight...

Are you saying Beef Stroganoff is NOT hamburger meat, cream of mushroom soup, Worsty and sour cream?

[AAQuesada]

I don't know whether it is proper to link to another forum here, so i won't, but ChowHound has a very passionate thread on this subject.

Of course if you like it do what ever you want (unless you have to serve it to a Russian). Personally I find the history of dishes very fascinating and try to respect tradition with out being tied down by it.

[Tri2Cook]

So, let me get this straight...

Are you saying Beef Stroganoff is NOT hamburger meat, cream of mushroom soup, Worsty and sour cream?

I thought it was ground beef and hamburger helper. Complete with the little packet of sour cream powder... modernist cuisine before it was cool.

[Norm Matthews]

Recipes grow and evolve. Just because one becomes well known is no reason to solidify it's ingredients in stone. Some people will always be gnashing their teeth and weeping and wailing over the sacrilege of adding something the first person didn't use.

[heidih]

As noted above "authentic" and "correct" are broad terms and not particularly relevant in many cases. However I must say that I physically cringed when I saw the post saying paprika in stroganoff!!!!!!

[janeer]

Well, I think there is such a thing as a classic preparation. You can change it, but then don't call it x. Someone has to keep authenticity alive. I'm thinking of something as simple as the RI jonnycake. It is 100% cornmeal plus liquid (water or milk). Some places are adding flour, and even eggs, because it makes it much easier to cook. Fine. But don't call it a jonnycake. You now have a pancake.

As for stroganoff (which I love, properly made). My recipe does not call for paprika. I can see adding it as a garnish for color.

[Norm Matthews]

Does Chili need a new name when you add beans? I'd say no but lots of people way chili does not have beans. How about if you add cinnamon and serve it over spaghetti? I'd say OMG that is not chili but lots of people in Ohio would argue with me. Are Potage Parmentier, Cawl Cennin, Minestra e Patate, hot Vichyssoise, and potato and leek soup different dishes because they have different names? Does Vichyssoise need a new name if one uses sour cream, creme fraiche or light cream instead of heavy cream? I don't think so. It is nice to recognize the differences though. However I agree that there is some point when ingredients make a dish something entirely different and needs a new name (like Cincinnati Chili, IMHO).

As for jonnycake, Johnny Cake or Journey cake, it is a recipe that has evolved. As time has gone by, other ingredients have become available and added. Now days it may have eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder and lard. It does not taste like the original recipe (thank goodness) but it is still called Johnny Cake. Again it is nice to understand what it once was and be happy you don't have to eat it that way anymore.

Edited October 3, 2011 by Norm Matthews (log)

[djyee100]

There comes a time when an ingredient is so outlandish that I reject the recipe as "authentic." Ketchup in a pad thai recipe, for example. But that boundary line is flexible for me. I know it when I see it.

...or, say, the very western touch of adding red wine to doro wot (which is common in a lot of recipes found online).

A few months ago I took a cooking class with an Ethiopian woman who has begun to teach around here. She taught a menu based on her family's recipes. Some of her ingredients: Red wine, olive oil, rosemary, and oregano. Huh? I didn't say anything during the class, but did some research afterwards. Italy tried to colonize Ethiopia several times beginning in the 19th century. The Ethiopians rejected their Italian overlords, but kept some of their wine and food influences. (Good choice.) After more than a hundred years, are those ingredients "authentic" to Ethiopian cooking? Not to purists maybe, but surely to some Ethiopian families who have cooked with those ingredients for generations.

[Snadra]

I die a little bit inside every time one of them hams up a Hollywood Italian or Spanish accent.

I got sick of dying a little each time I watched and just gave up.

WRT the beef stroganoff I've sometimes seen it with paprika as a garnish, but it's something I tend to avoid as I hate mushrooms and the slimy buggers seems to be ubiquitous in it. The two versions I have made and enjoyed are from Darra Goldstein and Pellaprat. They are both quite similar, and neither uses paprika or mushrooms, but the Pellaprat goes a step farther and has you discard the onions once they've lent their flavour to the meat.

When thinking about it, I have always viewed the Pellaprat version as the more authentic one simply because it's from an older and reliably French source. But that's sort of the problem. Tastes, ingredients and habits change over time. It's likely that the Pellaprat version was the authentic one in his corner of the world for the first half of the 20th century. If thats not how its being made today, if stroganoff automatically includes visions of mushrooms and paprika, maybe it's more appropriate to term some versions classic, and some modern (without the sort of "sousvide hamburger roll with bun soil" hideousness that made me finally turn off Masterchef).

To conclude, I believe 'authentic' polenta should actually be made with chestnut flour, but that's not what most of us think when we hear polenta.

Edited to fix glaring grammar issues.

Edited October 3, 2011 by Snadra (log)

[Shalmanese]

I think it matters when a recipe is defined by it's lack of a certain ingredient. For example, carbonara should have no cream in it, the creaminess of the sauce should come from the eggs coagulating to just the right degree. A dish with cream in it is undoubtably a tasty dish but it's no longer carbonara. I think the same would also apply to risotto.

Southern cornbread should have no sugar in it as this is what defines it from northern cornbread.

[Norm Matthews]

Jonnycake (fried gruel) is a New England term. In the South it's called hoecake and may sometimes be sweetened. My mother was from an extremely pour Southern family. They were migrant farm workers who worked the cotton fields during the depression. Sugar was a luxury item. So was white bread.

[Norm Matthews]

I suppose it comes down to a matter of degree and what you think of as original or classic. If you make a sandwich with toasted white bread, mayo, lettuce and bologna, you have no business calling it a Rueben. On the other hand, my mother got a recipe about 60 years ago from someone else. No telling who originated the recipe but it was a yellow squash casserole. All it had was squash, cream, onion and egg. It was topped with buttered bread crumbs. Over time that recipe has evolved or changed with the times. I see versions of it with carrots, eggplant, sour cream, cracker crumbs and cheddar cheese mixed in. You can find all of them online if you search for yellow squash casserole. If Louis Diat had created the original recipe, there would be people weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth over the awful changes people had made and saying it was not original. Squash casserole with sour cream isn't original but since it isn't a famous recipe with a famous name or romantic location attached, most people don't know or care what changes have been made. They either like it or don't.

When a recipe is moved to a new location on the globe some changes are inevitable. Why worry and fuss about something added that might not have been a choice or maybe even been available to the original a couple hundred years ago? Paprika? I was an old man before I knew it came any way other than as a flavorless red decorative powder.

[Tri2Cook]

No telling who originated the recipe but it was a yellow squash casserole. All it had was squash, cream, onion and egg. It was topped with buttered bread crumbs.

I don't know if there is a particular "the authentic" squash casserole but something very similar to you're mom's version, minus the egg and seasoned with a healthy dose of black pepper, is probably my favorite way to eat a pile of crooknecks. I can't see carrot, eggplant, sour cream, cheese, etc. doing anything that would be an improvement over the flavor of the squash sweetened by the onion, balanced by the pepper and enriched by a splash of cream with some texture from the breadcrumbs. Park a pile of collards next to the squash along with the protein of the day (fried chicken, country ham, catfish, pork chops, all of the above) and a plate of biscuits and/or corn bread on the side and it's time to loosen the belt.

[Norm Matthews]

LOL. A few hours ago I saw a good 'ole Southern classic recipe remake and had to shake my head and wonder what they were thinking. It was for Chicken Fried Steak. The whole purpose of that is to make something palatable out of something inedible. Take a piece of beef as tough as shoe leather and pound the behaysoos out of it, then cover up the crime with flour, deep fry it and-quick- hide it under some thick white gravy... In the South, sausage gravy is for breakfast. Milk gravy is for dinner.

Anyway this one used lean filet mignon, whole wheat flour, whole wheat panko breadcrumbs and baked it in the oven. The gravy was made with Italian turkey sausage and non fat Greek yogurt. HMMM now that I think about it i can see why some people complain about improvements. But I think this one missed the whole point.

[Jaymes]

Jonnycake (fried gruel) is a New England term. In the South it's called hoecake and may sometimes be sweetened. My mother was from an extremely pour Southern family. They were migrant farm workers who worked the cotton fields during the depression. Sugar was a luxury item. So was white bread.

My heritage is also southern. And my grandmother owned and ran a "home cooking" restaurant back in the 20's & 30's. As my grandmother and dad explained, the main reason why southern cornbread traditionally does not have sugar is because it was often served with other dishes, like greens, black-eyed peas, ham-hocks, etc., and was used for "sopping up" pot likker. It was also frequently jammed into a tall glass into which ice cold buttermilk was then poured and eaten with a spoon. Many a morning, southern folks would crumble some left-over cornbread into a bowl, top with something sweet (sugar, honey, blackstrap, whatever you like), and then milk was poured over to make "cornbread cereal" (my dad loved adding some crumbled bacon atop his).

And there's also cornbread salad, a favorite of potlucks and church suppers.

Northern sweet "cake style" cornbread, although certainly delicious on its own, doesn't lend itself particularly well to any of those applications, neither in taste nor texture.

Edited October 3, 2011 by Jaymes (log)

[annabelle]

LOL. A few hours ago I saw a good 'ole Southern classic recipe remake and had to shake my head and wonder what they were thinking. It was for Chicken Fried Steak. The whole purpose of that is to make something palatable out of something inedible. Take a piece of beef as tough as shoe leather and pound the behaysoos out of it, then cover up the crime with flour, deep fry it and-quick- hide it under some thick white gravy... In the South, sausage gravy is for breakfast. Milk gravy is for dinner.

Anyway this one used lean filet mignon, whole wheat flour, whole wheat panko breadcrumbs and baked it in the oven. The gravy was made with Italian turkey sausage and non fat Greek yogurt. HMMM now that I think about it i can see why some people complain about improvements. But I think this one missed the whole point.

Yuck. This sounds quite similar to a chicken-fried steak recipe a co-worker was telling me about. Made with rib-eye. And instant white gravy from a packet. I just said, "My. That sounds different." My mother was likewise an extremely poor child of migrant farmworkers. Meat was a luxury. She recalls many meals made of grits or oatmeal for supper. Butter was a luxury and milk, too. She stills makes excellent green beans cooked forever with salt pork and fantastic cornbread.

And to the OP, I have never made stroganoff with paprika.

[Norm Matthews]

My mom also put stale cornbread in a glass with milk and ate it with a spoon. She also made wonderful green beans cooked for a few hours with salt pork. My son won't eat it any other way. I use bacon instead of salt pork. It isn't quite the same but it gets by. Mom told me that for a time there was a neighbor who had a cow and they bartered for milk from time to time. Before they lost the farm, they had one hog a year hanging in the smoke house. It had to last through the winter and when they wanted chicken, they gave mom the .22 and a bullet. She was the best shot in the family and the chickens were 'free range" ie they couldn't afford a hen house.

FWIW, the stroganoff recipe I have does not use paprika either.

[Country]

.... when they wanted chicken, they gave mom the .22 and a bullet.

I've been around chickens some and never heard of anyone using a .22

Good story though...

[Norm Matthews]

Ever try to catch an uncaged, semi wild chicken? When I was a teen, we were at the county fair in Buffalo NY with mom's childhood best friend. We passed a booth where you shoot out the star on the target with a 22. Now days they use an automatic air rifle but then it was a .22. Mom's friend said mom should try it since she was a great shot. It was the first time I'd ever heard that. I'd never seen her even touch a gun before. She demurred several times but was finally talked into giving it a try. She knocked that star into oblivion. That was when I was told the story by her friend. Mom just got red and smiled and never mentioned it again.

Edited October 4, 2011 by Norm Matthews (log)

[nikkib]

Ghoulash with paprika - yes, stroganoff? No

[annabelle]

My mother tells of chopping chickens heads off with a small hatchet. Apparently the chickens knew when the jig was up and huddled around the doomed hen. Her grandmother had no time to waste with hatchets and simply wrung their necks. The "good ole days" were a little more close to the bone, eh?

[AAQuesada]

Yuck. This sounds quite similar to a chicken-fried steak recipe a co-worker was telling me about. Made with rib-eye. And instant white gravy from a packet. I just said, "My. That sounds different." My mother was likewise an extremely poor child of migrant farmworkers. Meat was a luxury. She recalls many meals made of grits or oatmeal for supper. Butter was a luxury and milk, too. She stills makes excellent green beans cooked forever with salt pork and fantastic cornbread.

And to the OP, I have never made stroganoff with paprika.

ROFLMAO!! I love that southern politeness. You have to be able to read tea leaves sometimes.