Skip to main content
Main

Hamburg Steak

Ground sirloin steak mixed with pepper, salt, and onion juice, formed into patties and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 the meat

  1. Cut off the tough end of the steak and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the chopped steak with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  3. Moisten your hands with cold water to prevent sticking.

  4. Form the mixture into round cakes or steaks, using about 2 tablespoons of meat for each.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in butter until nicely browned on both sides.

  2. Serve on a hot platter with melted butter poured over.

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. Onion + buttertop 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

Sirloin steak
Provides the meat that forms the body and bite of the patties.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the surface of the cakes.
Onion juice
Adds savory onion flavor to the raw meat mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in butter until nicely browned on both sides. Browning comes from surface heat triggering Maillard reactions, which build flavor. Frying too gently or too briefly leaves the cakes grey and bland, while the interior still needs enough heat to cook through.

Swap the onion

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.

More hamburg steak recipes

Casserole 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes