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Hamburg Steak

Ground beef and pork patty seasoned with pepper and salt, fried and cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Hamburg Steak

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hamburg Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and wash the meats, then grind them together.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mold the mixture into two large cakes, each about 1 inch thick.

  4. Sprinkle the cakes with flour.

Cook

  1. Fry the cakes in equal parts butter and lard until nicely browned.

  2. Cover and let cook slowly for 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Round steak
Provides the main lean beef body and meaty texture of the patties.
Fresh pork
Adds fat that keeps the patties moist and tender during cooking.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat and promotes browning on the surface.
Flour
Dusted on the cakes, it helps form a browned crust during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until nicely browned. Searing over sufficient heat builds a browned crust through the Maillard reaction, adding flavor. Frying too gently leaves the surface pale and the flavor flat.

“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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