THERE is undeniable pleasure in a plain beef burger — juicy, tender, and well browned over a backyard grill — but there’s even more in a jazzed-up one. If you begin with pork, lamb or beef that you buy yourself and grind at home, and continue by adding seasonings aggressively, you’re on your way to a summer full of great “burgers” which are, in essence, sausages in burger form.

In fact, I wondered while making (and eating) my first pork burger of the grilling season: Why would anyone make a plain burger? Why would you begin with supermarket ground beef — whose quality is highly questionable and whose flavor is usually disappointing, if not depressing — and then cook it without much seasoning beyond a few crystals of salt? Ketchup, after all, does not fix everything. Even adding mustard, pickles and so on, right down to mayonnaise, doesn’t give you good-tasting meat.

Image Credit... Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times

The question of how to improve on the basic burger is one I’ve pondered since the mother of Mark Roth, my childhood best friend, first served me one laced with Worcestershire sauce and other exotic spices. (Exotic for the late 1950s, at least, when even pepper grinders did not exist in the kitchens of most middle-class Jewish New Yorkers. ) My taste buds responded, and I began besieging my poor mother with demands for improved burgers. In the years that followed, neither she nor I could duplicate Shirley Roth’s concoction. It could be time to ask Mrs. Roth for her recipe, but I do not want to risk disappointment.