=Hamburg Steak.=--Hamburg steak, which is too often a delusion and a snare as furnished by the inexperienced cook, can be so manipulated in paper bag cookery as to emerge a very delectable and decorative dish. In the first place never telephone for hamburg steak nor buy that already chopped and mounded ostentatiously on a platter with a garnish of parsley. Naturally the butcher works up his trimmings and inferior cuts into this comparatively inexpensive and much patronized form. Having purchased your cut of round steak in the slice, its lack of natural fat must be made up by the addition of a little beef suet (preferably from the kidney). A piece of suet the size of a butter nut may be allowed to each pound of lean meat. Next, if possible, get the butcher to chop it by hand rather than by the easier-to-him method of running it through the meat grinder. Now having your good meat at home it may be prepared in any one of a half dozen ways. For the Hamburg steaks, press lightly together into cakes about the size of a chop. If onion is desired a little onion juice may be added with discretion, but for most tastes boiled onions served separately, to accompany the steak, will be found preferable, or a few rings of raw onion added to a lettuce salad. The closely packed Hamburg steak is bound to be tough and dry. Better add a beaten egg to hold the chopped meat together than press the small and delicate particles of meat compactly.
Season lightly, brush over with oil or melted butter and lay in buttered bag. Seal and roast for half an hour. Take up on a hot platter, season, add a little melted butter mixed with finely chopped parsley and serve hot with baked or mashed potatoes. A tomato sauce may go with the steaks or a brown gravy made from beef stock. A pleasant change in the appearance of Hamburg steak can be effected by shaping it to look like lamb chops. When these are bag broiled with a bit of macaroni in each end to simulate the chop bone they can be arranged to stand on a bed of parsley stacked against a pretty bowl containing tomato sauce or stewed tomato, a spoonful of which is to be served with each portion. The bed on which the chops are to rest may be mashed potato or peas, if preferred to the parsley.