Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Hamburg Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the steak
Scrape off the soft part of the steak until only tough, stringy fibers remain.
Season the pulp with salt and pepper.
Form the mixture into small, flat round cakes, each ½ inch thick.
Cook and serve
Broil the cakes for 2 minutes.
Serve on rounds of buttered toast.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Steak
- Supplies the meat, whose soft pulp forms the cakes and gives the dish its beefy flavor.
- Butter
- Adds fat and aroma, and browns the toast it is spread on.
The step that matters
Broil the cakes for 2 minutes. Thin cakes cook quickly under high direct heat. Extended heat tightens the meat proteins and drives out moisture, so a short broil keeps the lean pulp juicy.
“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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