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Hamburg Steaks

Hamburg steaks are finely chopped round steak formed into cakes, seasoned, fried, and garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hamburg Steaks

makes about 14 cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the round steak very fine.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a little onion juice.

  3. Form the mixture into small, round cakes (makes about 14 cakes).

Cook

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a pan.

  2. Fry the cakes until brown on both sides.

  3. Remove to a hot platter and pour the cooking fat over them.

  4. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  5. Alternatively, broil on a greased broiler or in a pan, seasoned with salt and pepper, and spread with butter.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them their meaty structure and texture.
Butter or fat
Conducts heat in the pan and browns the surface of the cakes, adding richness.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction at the surface, which needs a hot pan and enough dry heat. Crowding the pan or under-heating it leaves the cakes greyed and steamed rather than browned and flavourful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, lemon. 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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