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Hamburg Steak

Ground beef patties seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice, browned with onions, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Hamburg Steak

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hamburg Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Grind the meat once using a meat grinder.

  2. Season the ground meat with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  3. Form the mixture into round, flat cakes.

Brown the cakes and onions

  1. Brown the cakes quickly in a hot frying pan.

  2. Place the browned cakes in a paper bag.

  3. Peel the onions and add them to the pan with the fat used for browning the meat.

  4. Brown the onions quickly, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the browned onions over the meat in the paper bag.

Bake

  1. Cook in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat
Forms the body of the patties and supplies the savory, meaty flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture as they soften and brown in the fat.
Fat
Conducts heat for browning and carries flavor from the pan to the meat and onions.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the seasoned meat.

The step that matters

Brown the cakes quickly in a hot frying pan. High heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, creating flavorful crust. Slow browning steams the meat, leaving it grey and bland.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, 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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