Home › Meats › Hamburg Steak à la Tartare
Hamburg Steak à la Tartare
1 pound round steak 2 ounces beef suet 1 cup chopped onion 4 cup bread crumbs salt and pepper Put meat and suet through meat chopper; add finely chopped onion, and season with salt and pepper. Shape in balls; roll in crumbs; and broil over a clear fire, or panbroil. Serve on hot platter with brown gravy, tomato sauce, or Spanish sauce. Garnish with parsley.
A plain seasoned beef patty from the era when "Hamburg steak" meant ground round rather than a sandwich. Two of the printed quantities have been mangled in transcription, so read them with judgment.
- The garbled measurementsThe garbled measurement -- "4 cup bread crumbs" is most likely a quarter cup, the fraction bar having dropped out in printing. The full cup of chopped onion is a great deal against a single pound of meat, and will make the mixture wet and loose; you may prefer to use less.
- Suet, and what to use insteadTwo ounces of beef suet to a pound of lean round brings the mix to roughly 80 to 85 percent lean. If your butcher has no suet, ask for beef fat trim, or simply buy 80/20 ground chuck and skip the added fat.
- GrindingPass the meat and suet through the grinder together, twice on a coarse plate, so the fat distributes. Keep everything cold — under 40F — or the fat smears and the patties turn dense.
- Handle lightlyThis is the hinge. Mix only until the onion and seasoning are distributed and shape with a light hand; worked or compressed beef sets up springy and tight when cooked.
- "Panbroil"In 1907 this meant a dry, very hot heavy pan with no added fat — a cast-iron skillet over high heat is the direct equivalent. "A clear fire" means coals burned down past the flame, not a live blaze.
- The crumb coatingRolled crumbs scorch quickly over coals. Watch them closely, or dispense with the crumbs entirely if you are pan-searing, since they interfere with browning of the meat itself.
- DonenessGround beef should reach 160F throughout, which the period sources do not tell you. Flatten the balls slightly into thick patties so the centre cooks before the outside blackens.
- YieldA pound of meat makes four generous patties, serving three to four. Spanish sauce, referenced elsewhere in the book, is a tomato sauce with onion, green pepper and sometimes mushroom.
Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer — one of many turn-of-the-century cookbooks published to sell a branded ingredient, which is why its chocolate chapters run so long beside a workmanlike meat section like this one. "Hamburg steak" was appearing in American cookbooks and on restaurant menus by the later nineteenth century as chopped or scraped beef, often recommended to invalids and children on the grounds that it was easy to digest, and by 1907 it was ordinary family fare. The à la Tartare tag is the curiosity: it is usually associated with raw scraped beef seasoned with onion and served with tartar sauce, and elsewhere a steak "à la Tartare" is often uncooked. Here the name has drifted loose from its meaning and simply signals the onion and the seasoning, the dish itself being broiled like any other patty.