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Vienna Steaks

Vienna Steaks are minced beef cakes seasoned with herbs, fried, and served with mashed potatoes and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Vienna Steaks

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef steak and mix in the parsley, thyme, marjoram, egg, and seasonings.

  2. Flour a board well and form the mixture into small round cakes.

Fry and serve

  1. Flour the outside of the cakes and fry them in very hot dripping or suet for about 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Serve on a strip of mashed potato, pour brown sauce around the dish, and serve hot.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their meaty flavour and texture.
Egg
Binds the minced meat so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Dripping or suet
Fries the cakes in hot fat, browning the outside and adding richness.

The step that matters

Forming and flouring the cakes. Minced meat mixed with egg is soft, so the cakes must be shaped firmly and coated with flour; a dry outer layer helps them hold together and brown in the hot fat rather than breaking apart.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, egg, pepper, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, marjoram, egg, pepper, sauce. 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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