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Hamburg Steaks

Ground beef patties cooked in a pan with onion juice, seasoning, and a sauce made from flour and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hamburg Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all gristle and fat from the beef.

  2. Chop the beef very fine.

  3. Mix the seasoning and onion juice well with the beef.

  4. Form the mixture into four round, flat cakes.

Brown the cakes

  1. Heat the fat in a sauté pan until smoking.

  2. Add the meat cakes to the pan.

  3. Brown one side of the meat cakes.

  4. Brown the other side of the meat cakes.

  5. Transfer the meat cakes to a warmed platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Add enough fat to reach one tablespoon if less.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the stock or boiling water.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Season if necessary.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  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).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the protein that forms the body and firm texture of the cakes.
Drippings or other fat
Conducts heat for browning the cakes and adds rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquids into a gravy as it cooks with the fat.
Stock or boiling water
Dissolves the browned pan residue and forms the liquid base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until smoking before adding the cakes. A very hot pan sears the surface quickly, creating browning and flavor while helping the cakes hold their shape instead of steaming and sticking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, 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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