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Hamburg Steaks

Ground round steak formed into cakes, pan‑seared and served with a lemon‑parsley butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hamburg Steaks

six cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the patties

  1. Season the ground steak with salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  2. Form into six cakes, handling as little as possible.

Cook

  1. Heat a slightly greased frying pan over high heat.

  2. Sear the cakes on one side, then turn and sear the other side.

  3. Cook for 6 minutes for rare or 8 minutes for well done.

  4. Remove to a hot platter.

Make the butter and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and parsley, then slowly mix in lemon juice.

  3. Spread the butter mixture over the steaks.

  4. Garnish the platter with buttered cauliflower and parsley sprigs.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the main body of the patties and provides the meaty flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour when beaten into the topping.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter topping.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma to the butter topping.

The step that matters

Forming the cakes. Handling ground meat as little as possible keeps it tender, because overworking develops proteins that make the patties firm and dense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parsley, lemon, cauliflower):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, lemon, cauliflower. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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