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Hamburg Steak

A ground or finely chopped beef patty mixed with onion juice, salt, pepper, and egg, pan‑fried and served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Hamburg Steak

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Hamburg Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the patties

  1. Grind the steak or chop it very finely.

  2. Add onion juice, salt, pepper, and beaten egg to the meat and mix well.

  3. Form the mixture into flat cakes and dredge them with flour.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Sauté the cakes in hot butter or drippings until browned on both sides.

  2. Remove the steaks to a hot platter.

  3. In the same pan, stir in flour with the remaining fat until browned.

  4. Slowly add stock or hot water, stirring continuously.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and add optional mushrooms, peas, or cooked carrots.

  6. Heat through and pour the sauce around the steaks.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 or steak ends
Provides the meat base that forms the cakes and gives them their beefy flavour.
Egg
Binds the ground meat so the cakes hold their shape while cooking.
Flour
Dredging coats the cakes for browning, and flour cooked in the fat thickens the sauce.
Butter or drippings
Fat for sautéing that browns the cakes and carries flavour into the pan gravy.
Stock or hot water
Liquid that becomes the sauce, carrying savoury flavour around the steaks.

The step that matters

Sautéing the cakes until browned on both sides. Hot fat and direct contact drive the Maillard reaction, which builds browned flavour. Cakes added to a cool pan steam, go grey and stick, and the pan drippings needed for the sauce are lost.

Swap the onion

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

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

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