Hamburg Steak
Have lean raw beef finely chopped; season well with pepper and salt and a little chopped onion or onion juice. Mold into cakes and broil in a greased broiler or hot frying pan. When done spread with butter or pour over them a brown sauce made in the pan.
A bare-bones formula from the era when "Hamburg steak" meant a plain chopped beefsteak, eaten with a knife and fork rather than in a bun. The instructions assume you know your own meat, so a few things need filling in.
- "Finely chopped" is not ground to a pasteThe period method was hand-chopping with a knife or a coarse plate on a hand grinder, which leaves the meat loose and open. Modern fine grind, especially if you then work it, compacts into a springy puck. Handle the mixture as little as possible and shape the cakes with a light hand.
- Lean beef is a trap hereStrictly lean chopped beef will be dry once broiled. Around 15 to 20 percent fat, roughly a chuck grind, gives a juicier cake; the butter spread at the end will also help a lean mixture.
- "Broiler" means the rack, not the applianceIn this period a greased broiler was a hinged wire gridiron held over coals or set under a gas flame. A heavy cast-iron pan, well heated and lightly greased, is the closest everyday equivalent and gives a good crust.
- Onion juiceGrate a small onion and press the pulp through a fine sieve, or grate it directly on a microplane. It seasons without leaving raw onion pieces that scorch and fall out of the cake.
- Doneness"When done" in this period usually meant cooked through. Ground beef should reach 160F internally, which for a cake about three-quarters of an inch thick is roughly four minutes a side over good heat.
- The brown sauce made in the panOnce the cakes are out, pour off excess fat, deglaze with a little stock or water, scrape up the browned bits and swirl in butter. A teaspoon of flour cooked in the fat first thickens it if you want something closer to a proper gravy.
- Quantities and yieldNone are given. A pound of chopped beef makes four cakes of about four ounces, serving two to three as a main dish with a starch and a vegetable.
Chopped beefsteak in the Hamburg style turns up in American cookbooks and restaurant menus in the later nineteenth century, and the name is generally traced to the transatlantic steamship trade out of Hamburg and to German immigrants who brought the habit of seasoned chopped beef with them. Through the late nineteenth century it carried a reputation as a wholesome, easily digested dish, frequently recommended for invalids and for people with weak digestions on the theory that the meat had already been broken down by the knife. Jane Eayre Fryer's cookery book sits at the moment when the dish was still firmly a knife-and-fork steak served with butter or pan gravy; the sandwich form that took over the name in America was already circulating at fairs and lunch counters but had not yet displaced this plainer treatment in the household kitchen.