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Some Kitchen Kinks: Hamburg
Hamburg Steak.
This name is commonly given to inexpensive cuts of beef chopped, seasoned a little, shaped into small balls or into one large thin cake, and quickly broiled in the way that a tender steak would be. Owing to the quick cooking much of the natural flavor of the meat is developed and retained. The fact should be kept in mind that Hamburg steak must be made from fresh, wellground meat. It is much safer to chop the meat at home, as chopped meat spoils very quickly. Much depends, too, upon browning it sufficiently to bring out the flavors. Many cooks think that Hamburg steak is improved if the meat is mixed with milk before it is cooked.
In some parts of the country, and particularly in some of the Southern States, two kinds of beef are on sale. One is imported from other parts of the country and is of higher price. The other, known locally as "native beef," is sometimes lacking in flavor and in fat and is usually tougher. Southern native beef such as is raised in Florida is almost invariably, however, of extremely good flavor, due presumably to the feed or other conditions under which it is raised. By chopping such meat and cooking it as Hamburg steak, a dish almost as palatable as the best cuts of the more expensive beef may be obtained. In such cases, however, it is desirable because of the low percentage of fat to add suet or butter to the meat. The reason for this is that in the cooking the water of the juice when unprotected by fat evaporates too quickly and leaves the meat dry. This may be prevented by adding egg as well as fat, for the albumen of the egg hardens quickly and tends to keep in the juices. The proportion should be 1 egg to 1½ pounds of meat.
An essay-style entry rather than a numbered recipe, but the working instructions are all here: grind fresh beef, add fat and egg to lean meat, shape, and cook hot and fast. A few points translate the period assumptions.
- The hinge: grind it freshThe insistence on home-chopped meat is the heart of the entry, and it still holds. Grinding multiplies surface area and mixes surface bacteria through the whole mass, which is why ground beef spoils faster and why it needs a higher finished temperature than a whole steak.
- DonenessWhatever the period practice of quick broiling, ground beef should reach 160F throughout. A whole muscle steak can be served rare because the interior is effectively sterile; a patty cannot.
- Egg proportionThe stated ratio is one egg to a pound and a half of meat. That is roughly one egg to 24 oz, a light bind rather than a meatloaf mixture.
- FatAim for 15 to 20 percent fat. If working with very lean beef, the suggested suet is still the best addition: ask a butcher for beef fat and grind it in at about 3 oz per pound of lean. Butter works but browns and burns at broiling heat.
- "Quickly broiled"The book does not say what over. Broiling of the period was generally done over coals or under a gas range's burner, close to a fierce heat. A modern approximation is a heavy cast-iron pan over high heat, or a broiler element with the rack set 3 to 4 inches away; roughly two to three minutes a side for a half-inch patty, cooked to temperature rather than to the clock.
- The milkThe text notes that many cooks thought the meat improved by mixing milk into it before cooking, though it gives no quantity; a little milk per pound is the usual reading. Added liquid keeps the interior moist and is loosely related to the bread-and-milk panade used in meatballs, though that is a different mixture. It also makes the meat softer to shape, so chill it before forming.
- "Native beef"The regional distinction described here no longer exists in the retail trade. Read it as guidance for any lean, grass-finished or older animal: such beef benefits from added fat, and grinding is a good use for it.
- YieldA pound and a half of meat with one egg makes four generous patties or about twenty small balls.
The name records the dish's route rather than its invention: chopped seasoned beef cooked as a cake was associated with Hamburg by the mid-nineteenth century and is generally traced to the port's transatlantic passenger trade, appearing on American menus as "Hamburg steak" or "Hamburg beefsteak" well before the bun arrived. What is striking in this entry is the economic argument: chopping is presented as a way of making cheap, lean, tough beef eat like an expensive cut, which is exactly the household-economy logic that ran through American domestic manuals of the period. The warning that chopped meat spoils quickly, and the advice to grind it at home, belong to a moment when mechanical meat grinders had become cheap enough for domestic kitchens but refrigeration in the butcher's shop and the home was still unreliable.