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Hamburg Steak

Hamburg steak is a patty made from ground round steak and suet or bacon, seasoned with pepper and salt, fried in butter.

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

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hamburg Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the round steak and suet or bacon together.

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

  3. Form the mixture into balls.

Cook

  1. Fry the balls in butter until cooked through.

  2. Add a little onion juice if desired.

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

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 meaty body and structure of each patty.
Suet or bacon
Adds fat that melts during frying, keeping the lean meat moist and tender.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside, adding rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry until cooked through. Round steak is lean and dries out if overcooked, while the suet or bacon fat melts to keep it juicy. Cook until the centre is fully done, but stop once it is, so the balls stay moist.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter. 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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