It’s National Hamburger Day! And fans across North America are lining up at their favourite Fast Food joints or firing up their grills to celebrate. I thought it might be a good time to reflect on what it would be like if the hamburger had never been invented. What a different world it would be!
The ‘Classic Hamburger’ has come a long way from its humble
beginnings as a bare patty between two slices of bread…
It’s fair to say the hamburger as we know and appreciate it is an American invention. There were other proto-burgers before it, hailing from different parts of Europe – especially Germany. In fact, ‘Hamburger’ literally means someone or something from Hamburg, Germany.
Pre-history
Wikipedia defines the subject of today’s post thus: “The modern hamburger was a product of the culinary needs of a society rapidly changing due to industrialization and the emergence of the working class and the middle class with the resulting demand for mass-produced, affordable food that could be consumed outside of the home.
“Considerable evidence suggests that either the United States or Germany (the city of Hamburg) was the first country where two slices of bread and a ground beef steak were combined into a ‘hamburger sandwich’.
“The burger is now readily identified with the United States, and a particular style of cuisine, namely fast food. Along with fried chicken and apple pie, the hamburger has become a culinary icon in the United States.”
It’s hard to argue with any of that!
Origins of the classic American burger
Over the years, many folks have claimed they invented the burger as we know it. I guess it’s inevitable that a lot of actors would vie for the lead role in the History of the hamburger, given its iconic place in the great culinary cavalcade.
A fairly recent Washington Post story by Eric Ofgang delves into the question of who invented the burger in some detail. It’s telling that the opening line of the investigative report reads: “Hamburger history is dripping with lies.”
“One popular story goes that in 1900 a customer walked into Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Conn., and asked for something he could eat on the go,” Ofgang recounts. “Owner Louis Lassen improvised by giving him a patty of the restaurant’s steak trimmings between two pieces of toast. […] The story has been repeated many times by Connecticut and national publications, but I have recently found proof it is not true.”
So where did the modern hamburger originate?
Ofgang says he’s found evidence – mainly old newspaper clippings – proving that hamburger ‘steaks’ were bring served in many places as far back as 1890. He’s catalogued more than a dozen early newspaper ads and stories chronicling burgers in Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, California and even Hawaii.
“In Wisconsin, many claim the burger was invented by Charlie Nagreen, who purportedly sold a meatball between two slices of bread at an 1885 fair in Seymour,” Ofgang relates. “In Athens, Tex., the title of ‘hamburger creator’ is bestowed upon Fletcher Davis, who supposedly came up with it in the 1880s. Other burger origin stories can be found in New York, Oklahoma and elsewhere, but they lack documentation.”
The truth, Ofgang finally admits, is that the hamburger was probably invented in many places around the same time. But it didn’t become a widely recognised dish until the 1920s, when White Castle opened its first restaurant ‘starring’ the modern hamburger. The McDonald brothers refined the fast service technique for prepping and serving the burger and it’s sidekick, fries, in the 1940s. And the rest is history we’re all familiar with.
But what if…
Have you seen the movie Yesterday? It’s a 2-hour speculation on what the world would be like if the Beatles had never existed. Only the central character, Jack, remembers the Fab 4, likely because he suffered a severe head injury at the exact instant the world changed. It’s an intriguing romp through an alternate universe. And it makes you think… What if other cultural institutions we take for granted had never existed?
Take the hamburger, for example
If the burger had never existed, what would the fast food world look like? I think it’s fairly safe to say that the Hot Dog – in our world, always the Fast Food bride’s maid, never the bride – would have ascended the Fast Food throne.
The modern Hot Dog is agreed by most authorities. to have been invented by Nathan Handwerker of Coney Island, NY, in 1916. Nate left the employ of another sausage maker over differences in opinion about the product. And he and his wife started making what we know as hot dogs using his mother-in-law’s recipe with a few tweaks.
Over the years, Nathan’s invented the hot dog cart and is credited with staging the first hot dog eating contest – the common ancestor of all the eating contests, pro and am, we have today.
Today, the hot dog is synonymous with baseball in the U.S. and Nathan’s Famous brand is the official hot dog of Major League Baseball. The 2018 deal marked the first time that the MLB had named an official hot dog sponsor. And you’ll find hot dogs on sale at virtually every pro or am sporting event.
Most tellingly, the hot dog is inextricably entwined with American culture. The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is still held annually on July 4.
Imagine…
But for concerted promotional efforts by a few of burger pioneers – White Castle, the McDonald brothers and McDonald’s franchise genius Ray Kroc – the hot dog might occupy the hallowed place in American culinary lore that the burger does today.
If the burger had never been born, we’d have dog joints instead of burger joints. Burger King might be Dog King. Who knows how the hierarchy of popular condiments would lay out? Dogs and burgers take many of the same toppings, but some are more popular on dogs, and vice-versa. I’d guess, for one thing, that mustard would have surpassed ketchup as the leading bun-food topper.
Something to think about as you bite into your celebratory burger today…
~ Maggie J.