No. 1361

Hamburg Steak a la Tartare

Bifteck de Hambourg a la Tartare

Hamburg steaks are made with lean and tender beef, either the tenderloin or sirloin. Chop up with a knife on a chopping block twelve ounces of raw beef free of all fat and nerves; season with salt and pepper, add half a medium onion cut in small one-eighth of an inch squares or else have it finely chopped; form it into a ball and flatten. These steaks are generally eaten raw. For cooked see the Hamburg steak No. 1360. For steaks a la Tartare, add half a finely cut up green pepper or else it can be cut in small squares. After the steak is formed into a flattened ball make a hole in the center and break into it one very fresh egg, or else the yolk only.

← No. 1360 Beef Steak, Hamburg Style Beef No. 1362 Porterhouse Steak →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is raw beef topped with a raw egg, and nothing in it is ever heated. The notes below explain the specific hazards rather than how to proceed.

Why this one fails todayRanhofer's steak relies on beef hand-chopped in an open kitchen and eaten uncooked, with a raw shell egg broken into the center. Neither component reaches any temperature at which E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella or Listeria is controlled, and the recipe gives no sourcing, chilling or holding instructions at all.
Chopping is the problem, not the cutWhole muscle beef carries most of its bacterial load on the exterior surface. Chopping or grinding distributes that surface throughout the mass, which is precisely why intact steak can be served rare and chopped beef cannot. Twelve ounces of hand-minced sirloin, seasoned, shaped and dressed with no chilling step specified, is the worst case for that logic.
The raw egg in the wellRanhofer's instruction takes the freshness of the egg as sufficient warrant. It is not: Salmonella can be present inside an intact, clean, newly laid egg. Modern steak tartare in restaurants is made under sourcing and handling controls a home kitchen does not have, and is still advised against for children, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immunocompromised.
"Free of all fat and nerves"Ranhofer means trimmed of fat, silverskin and connective tissue, worked with a knife rather than a grinder so the meat stays in distinct fibers. It is a description of texture, not of safety, and no amount of trimming addresses the contamination question.
If you want the dishUse a current recipe from a source that specifies sourcing, temperature and same-day service, or order it somewhere that does. Recipe No. 1360, the cooked Hamburg steak Ranhofer cross-references, is the version of this page that survives intact.
Units, for readingThe recipe calls for twelve ounces of trimmed beef but does not state how many it serves. The onion is specified as one-eighth-inch squares; the pepper is given simply as half a green pepper, cut fine or in small squares.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this pair of entries catches a dish mid-transformation. "Hamburg steak" is usually said to have reached American menus with German emigration through the port of Hamburg in the mid-nineteenth century; some American cookbooks of the period recommend it as a soft, digestible meat for invalids as well as a restaurant plate. In classic French kitchen usage a la tartare denoted a dish served with a sharp cold sauce (sauce tartare); the association of the name with raw meat and with Tatar horsemen is folk tradition rather than documented origin, and does not correspond to any known Central Asian dish. What Ranhofer describes here, with the flattened patty, the well pressed into the center and the yolk dropped in, is recognizably what later came to be called steak tartare; his cooked No. 1360 sits directly beside it, and the cooked Hamburg steak is the line from which the hamburger is generally traced.