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Hambukg Steak

Ground round steak mixed with lemon juice, salt, pepper, ginger and sage, formed into patties, fried with onion, served with brown sauce and fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hambukg Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Grind the round steak and fat together very fine.

  2. Add lemon juice, salt, pepper, ginger, and sage.

Cook the onion

  1. Slice the onion.

  2. Fry the onion in butter until golden brown; remove the onion.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the meat to the skillet.

  2. Shape the meat into cakes or a large flat steak.

  3. Cover the skillet.

  4. Fry the meat on both sides until cooked through.

  5. Place the cooked steak on a hot dish.

  6. Add flour to the gravy to make a brown sauce.

  7. Stir in ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and stock or water.

  8. Pour the sauce over the steak.

  9. Garnish with parsley.

  10. Serve with fried potatoes.

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. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Ginger + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Lean meat forms the body of the patties and gives a firm, beefy texture.
Fat
Fat keeps the ground meat moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Flour thickens the pan juices into a brown sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the gravy.
Onion
Sweetens and browns in butter, adding aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the meat until cooked through. Ground meat can look done on the outside while the centre is still undercooked, so the patties should be cooked fully through, not just browned. Covering the skillet helps the heat reach the middle.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, sage, onion, butter, flour, ketchup. 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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