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Hamburg and Peas
1 lb. hamburger steak 1 can peas 1 small onion Salt and pepper Dice and brown onion in a little hot fat, then fry meat until thoroughly done, add peas (with juice) and let all simmer about 10 minutes. Season to taste.
Mrs. Richard Earle. i
A church-supper skillet dish of the plainest kind, written for cooks who already knew what they were doing. A few notes bring it into a modern kitchen.
- Hamburger steakListed here by the pound as an ingredient, so bulk ground beef is meant rather than a formed patty (the term was used both ways at the time). One pound of 80/20 chuck is the right choice; leaner beef will dry out during the simmer.
- The can of peasThe recipe wants the packing liquid as the sauce. Modern cans run about 15 oz, smaller than the cans commonly sold in the period, so err on the generous side. Modern canned peas are already soft and need only to heat through; frozen peas substituted here will want their own liquid, about half a cup of stock.
- "A little hot fat"Beef drippings, bacon fat or lard. A tablespoon of neutral oil does the same work, and once the beef renders you may want to pour some off before the peas go in.
- Brown, then break upLet the beef sit undisturbed a minute or two before stirring so it colours rather than steams. "Thoroughly done" here means no pink, which for ground beef is the correct target anyway.
- The ten-minute simmerThis is where the dish either comes together or turns grey and watery. Keep it at a bare bubble uncovered so the pea liquor reduces and glazes the meat; a hard boil will toughen the beef and collapse the peas.
- SeasoningCanned peas carry a good deal of salt, so season at the end as directed rather than at the start. A dash of Worcestershire or a spoonful of tomato is in keeping with the period if the dish tastes flat.
- Yield and servingServes three to four as a luncheon dish. The recipe gives no serving instruction; it takes well to mashed potatoes, toast points or boiled rice.
Community cookbooks of this kind were commonly sold to raise money, and they preserve a good deal of plain everyday cooking alongside the showier company dishes. This dish belongs to the early canned-goods era, when a tin of peas was a small marvel of convenience and using the packing liquid as sauce was ordinary thrift, not a shortcut to apologise for. Ground beef had become cheap and widely available with the spread of mechanical grinders and refrigerated rail shipping, and "hamburger steak" is the older American name for it, generally traced to the Hamburg-style chopped beef associated with German immigrants in the nineteenth century. The name attached to it, Mrs. Richard Earle, follows the convention of the day: a contributor was identified by her husband's name.