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Hamburg Steak

Ground beef steak seasoned with salt, pepper, onion, and egg white, formed into patties and pan‑fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Hamburg Steak

Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 ↓

Hamburg Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove excess fat and stringy parts from the steak, then grind the meat using a meat chopper.

  2. Mix in salt, grated onion, pepper, and the slightly beaten egg white until well combined.

  3. Shape the mixture into uniform flat cakes, ensuring the edges are as thick as the center.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a well-greased iron skillet over high heat and sauté the cakes until browned on one side.

  2. Flip the cakes and brown the other side.

  3. Serve with brown or tomato sauce and top each cake with half of a broiled tomato.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 body of the patties, with its lean meat forming the base of the dish.
Egg white
Binds the ground meat so the cakes hold their shape while cooking.
Grated onion
Adds moisture and flavor to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Shaping the cakes evenly. Edges thinner than the center cook through and dry out before the middle is done, so the cakes should be shaped with uniform thickness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg. 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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