Hamburg Steaks
Chop finely one pound lean raw beef; season highly with salt, pepper, and a few drops onion juice or one-half shallot finely chopped. Shape, cook, and serve as Meat Cakes. A few gratings of nutmeg and one egg slightly beaten may be added.
PLANKS FOR PLANKED DISHES. - Page 198.
BEEFSTEAK À LA MIRABEAU. - Page 197.
A one-line recipe that leans on a cross-reference the modern reader does not have: "Meat Cakes" means shape into flat rounds and broil or pan-brown them quickly. A few notes on what that assumes.
- The chopping"Chop finely" means hand-chopped on a board or run through a hand grinder, which gives a coarser, looser texture than supermarket ground beef. Ask for a coarse grind, or pulse chunks of chuck in a food processor, and handle the mixture as little as possible once seasoned.
- Cook as Meat CakesThe referenced method is to shape the meat into flat cakes and either broil them or brown them in a hot frying pan with a little fat. The cross-referenced recipe is not reproduced here, so thickness and timing must be judged by eye; expect them served as a plain meat course, not on a bun.
- DonenessBecause the beef is chopped, surface bacteria are distributed through the interior. Cook to 160F internal; rare chopped beef was not unusual in the period, and that is the one point where modern practice differs meaningfully.
- Onion juiceA standard nineteenth-century seasoning made by grating an onion and pressing out the liquid, used when visible onion was unwanted. Half a small shallot, minced very fine, does the same job and is the easier route.
- "Season highly"Not vague enthusiasm but a deliberate instruction: unsalted ground beef is flat. Figure about a teaspoon of salt per pound, mixed in just before shaping so the salt does not begin curing the meat into a springy texture.
- The eggOffered as optional and it behaves as a binder, giving a firmer, more sliceable cake. Leave it out for a looser, more tender result; include it if the meat is very lean and inclined to crumble.
- NutmegA few gratings is genuinely a few " it is a German seasoning habit for minced beef, meant to register as warmth rather than as nutmeg. Grate it fresh; pre-ground is a different and duller thing.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a pound will make about four cakes, enough for three or four as a main course with a vegetable and potatoes.
- The trailing lines"PLANKS FOR PLANKED DISHES" and "BEEFSTEAK À LA MIRABEAU" are page cross-references carried over from the printed book, not part of the recipe.
The Hamburg steak reached American cookbooks by way of German immigration and the transatlantic passenger trade out of Hamburg, and by the 1880s and 1890s it appears in restaurant menus and household manuals " seasoned chopped beef, shaped and broiled, served as a plain meat course rather than in bread. Its placement here is telling: it sits among the beef entries as a use for lean raw meat, a companion to Meat Cakes rather than a novelty, and it is one of several dishes in the period recommended as digestible and strengthening for invalids and children, chopped beef being thought easier on the stomach than a whole steak. The hamburger sandwich as Americans now know it emerged from the same chopped-beef tradition around the turn of the century, though the various claims about who first put one between bread are traditional rather than documented.