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Hamburger Steak

A seasoned ground steak patty cooked in a pan and garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hamburger Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the patties

  1. Mince the round steak very fine and mix the minced onion with the meat.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Form the mixture into flat cakes the size of a biscuit.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the lard and butter in a frying pan until boiling hot.

  2. Fry the steak cakes until nicely browned on both sides.

  3. Garnish with parsley around the edge of the platter and lemon slices on top.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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
Forms the main body of the patties, giving them their meaty texture and savory flavor.
Onion
Adds moisture and aromatic flavor to the ground meat mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and a rich flavor to the frying surface.
Lard
Adds fat that tolerates high heat, helping the cakes brown well in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the steak cakes until nicely browned on both sides. The fat must be very hot before the cakes go in. Hot fat sears the surface quickly, producing browning and flavor while keeping the inside juicy. Cooking in cool fat would let the cakes steam and turn grey and dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, 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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