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Hamburg Steaks

Chopped steak balls served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the steak.

  2. Mix in onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  3. Wet your hands with cold water and form the mixture into 8 balls, each about 2 tablespoons.

Cook the steaks

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Add the meatballs and cook for 1-2 minutes on each side until browned.

  3. Remove the steaks to a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same pan, add flour and mix it with the remaining butter until smooth.

  2. Stir in boiling water and bring to a boil.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  4. Boil the sauce for 3 minutes.

  5. Pour the sauce over the steaks and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Upper round steak
Provides the main protein; finely chopping it gives the patties a tender, even texture.
Butter
Fat for searing the steaks, adding browning and rich flavor to the pan.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the butter and mixing until smooth. Flour must be fully blended into the fat and pan juices before the boiling water goes in; otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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