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Baked Hamburg Steak

A baked ground steak mixture of round steak and kidney suet, seasoned with pepper and dredged in flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Hamburg Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all fat, tendons, and gristle from the round steak.

  2. Pass the steak through a meat grinder.

  3. Grind the kidney suet and mix it with the ground steak.

  4. Shape the mixture into a square mound.

Bake and serve

  1. Season the mound with pepper.

  2. Dredge the mound with flour.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked to your preference.

  4. Pour off any excess grease.

  5. Serve with butter and coarse sea salt.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the main meat body and beefy flavor of the patty.
Kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the mound moist and tender as it bakes.
Flour
Dredging coat that helps the surface brown and form a crust.

The step that matters

Shape the mound and bake until cooked to your preference. Ground meat mixed with suet is soft and loosely bound, so its shape and surface can slump. Cooking by doneness rather than time means the interior can be underdone or overdone, and fat rendering affects moisture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, flour, butter. 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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