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Vienna Steaks

Vienna Steaks are ground beef and ham patties seasoned with herbs and mace, fried in fat and served with onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,078 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Vienna Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Pass the steak, ham, and onion through a meat grinder.

  2. Add sweet herbs, ground mace, and beaten eggs; mix thoroughly.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes or balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in boiling fat for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with fried onions or a braised onion on each steak.

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. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  2. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  3. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Ham + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,050 recipes
  5. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Lean rump steak
Provides the meat base that gives the cakes their main body and savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the ground mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the minced meat.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the cakes. The mixture is soft because it is raw meat bound only by egg. Packing it firmly and frying in hot fat helps the surface set and brown before the cakes break apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, 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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