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Hamburg Steak

A ground round steak seasoned with salt, pepper, onion juice, and parsley, formed into steaks and cooked by broiling or sautéing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Hamburg Steak

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hamburg Steak

six steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the round steak using a meat chopper.

  2. Mix in salt, pepper, onion juice, and chopped parsley.

  3. Form the mixture into six steaks, ensuring the edges are not thinner than the center.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil or sauté the steaks.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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
Provides the meat base, giving the steaks their main body and beefy flavor.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out flavor through the mixture.
Onion juice
Adds savory onion aroma without the chunks of raw onion.

The step that matters

Form the mixture into six steaks, ensuring the edges are not thinner than the center.. Thin edges overcook and dry out before the center reaches doneness. Even thickness lets the steak cook uniformly, so the whole patty stays juicy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley. 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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