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Hamburg Steaks

Hamburg steaks are ground beef patties seasoned with onion, salt, paprika, and mace, then dredged in flour and sautéed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hamburg Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the patties

  1. Combine the chopped beef, beaten egg, onion juice, coarse sea salt, paprika, and ground mace in a bowl, then mix well until fully combined.

  2. Mould the mixture into flat cakes.

  3. Dredge the cakes in salted flour and refrigerate for 1 hour.

  4. Roll the cakes in flour again before cooking.

Cook

  1. Sauté the cakes in butter or dripping until browned.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Lean beef
Provides the main body of the cakes, and its fat carries flavour and juiciness.
Beaten egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the cakes hold their flat shape.
Flour
Forms a dry coating on the cakes that helps them brown evenly in the fat.

The step that matters

Sauté the cakes until browned. Cooking in hot butter or dripping browns the flour coating and the meat surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour. Cooking too gently leaves the cakes pale and steamed.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, onion, flour, butter. 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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