A patty is a flattened, usually round, Serving size of ground meat or legumes, grains, vegetables, or . Common ground meat used include beef, bison, elk, turkey, chicken, ostrich, and salmon. Patties are found in multiple cuisines throughout the world.
The ingredients are compacted and shaped, usually cooked, and served in various ways.
Etymology
The term originated in the 17th century as an English alteration of the French word pâté, originally meaning a pastry with a meat filling, and later the filling itself.
Terminology
The term "patty" is used in many varieties of
English language, but less frequently in Britain and
Ireland than in the
United States.
[Google ngrams comparison of the phrase "hamburger patty/ies" in US and UK English. [1]] Merriam-Webster defines it as "a small flat cake of chopped food",
as "pieces of food, especially meat, formed into a thin, circular shape and then usually cooked".
In some countries, patties may be called "discs."
Similar-shaped cakes not made from ground beef may also be called "burgers": "fish burgers" may be made from reshaped mechanically separated meat.
Veggie burger patties are made without meat and instead use legumes, grains, other mixed vegetables, and/or soy products such as tofu or tempeh or seitan, a product made of wheat gluten, often mixed with a binding agent.
Variations and serving styles
Croquettes
Patties can be breaded and deep-fried, producing
such as
.
In
Ireland, traditional chippers often serve
batter burgers (a beef-based patty dipped in batter and
deep frying). A batter burger served as a sandwich is called a
wurly burger, and is believed to have been invented by the Mona Lisa chipper in Crumlin, Dublin.
In Japan the
Korokke is an example.
are meat (typically beef), or fish and other ingredients, coated in breadcrumbs or less frequently battered, and deep-fried; they are found in various European cuisines.
[ Rissoles FoodsOfEngland.info. Accessed April 2025.]
Cutlets
Patties can be treated as a
cutlet and eaten with a knife and fork in dishes like
Salisbury steak, the German
Hamburg steak, or the Serbo-Croatian
pljeskavica, or with chopsticks in dishes such as
Tteok-galbi.
Other examples include the Russian
Pozharsky cutlet.
[Павел Сюткин, Ольга Сюткина. Непридуманная история русской кухни. Котлетная история. Moscow: Астрель, 2015 (in Russian). .][Н. А. Лопатина. История пожарских котлет. Тверь: ТО "Книжный клуб", 2014 (in Russian). ]
Fritters
Aloo tikki is a potato patty that originated in the Indian subcontinent.
A related dish is
ragda pattice, which covers the potato patty in a gravy.
An arepa is a dish of maize and other ingredients shaped into a patty and ; it has been eaten in parts of Central and South American since pre-Columbian times.
Quenelles
Gefilte fish is often served as a
quenelle, a patty shaped into a flattened egg.
Sandwich fillings
Patties are often served as
, typically in
, making a type of sandwich called a "burger", or a
hamburger if the patty is made from
ground beef, or sometimes between slices of bread. An American
patty melt is a ground beef patty topped with melted cheese (typically Swiss) served on toasted bread, typically
Rye bread.
In Ireland, traditional chippers often serve sandwiches called spice burgers.
In Japan and Korea, a ground beef patty is sometimes served as a sandwich on a "bun" made of compressed rice; the sandwich is called a rice burger.
Tartares
Some patties, like
steak tartare and Middle Eastern
Kibbeh nayyeh, are served raw.
Commercial production
Commercially produced patties are machine-formed.
With mass-production patties, it is not uncommon to find them with seemingly abnormal shapes or a bumpy perimeter. These groove-like bumps are caused by the machine that forms the patties. They are used in production to keep the patties in line, so they will not fall off the assembly line, and can be manipulated by the various machines. In other boxed patties, small punctures can be seen in the top and bottom sides of the patty. These punctures are there for similar reasons.
See also
