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Hamburg Steaks

Hamburg steaks are finely chopped beef patties seasoned with onion, salt, and pepper, browned and served with a sauce.

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

eight small cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the beef very fine, discarding fat, skin, and gristle.

  2. Mix the chopped meat, onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Form the mixture into eight small cakes.

Brown and serve

  1. Heat the beef drippings in a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Brown the steaks on both sides.

  3. Place the browned steaks on a hot dish.

  4. Add flour to the drippings in the pan. Mix the flour into the drippings. Brown the flour mixture.

  5. Gradually stir in the stock or cold water until it boils. Pour the sauce around the steaks.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef from the upper round
Forms the main body of the steaks, giving them their meaty texture and savory flavor.
Onion
Adds moisture and aromatic flavor to the meat mixture.
Flour
Browned in the drippings, it thickens the stock into a sauce.
Beef drippings
Fat for searing the steaks, browning their surface and carrying flavor into the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the drippings. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden removes its raw taste and builds color and nutty flavor before liquid is added. Adding stock too early or unevenly can leave lumps, so stir in the liquid gradually.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour. 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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