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The origin of the hamburger: Great sandwich or greatest sandwich ever?

Published on January 13, 2010

Speaking of hamburgers, which I was (specifically, hucking them across continents), are you aware just how close we came to going out for “tartars and fries”?

The Tartars (or Tatars) are an ethnic group found around Russia, descendants of Mongolians, who were once at the leading edge of finely chopped meat. The legacy remains in the modern day steak tartare, which is basically a mound of raw ground beef, though the fancy French restaurants make it sound more… how do you say… edible.

While the recipe of ground beef, minced onions, and seasoning stayed much the same, after making it to the port town of Hamburg, Germany they started to cook it. It was from here that the Hamburg steak, as it came to be known, spread across the world in the 1800s.

Side note: the Salisbury steak is pretty much identical to a Hamburg steak, but named after Dr. James Salisbury who promoted eating meat three times a day, and limiting vegetables, fruits and starchy foods.

A little earlier, mid 1700s, it was John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, asked for some meat tucked between two pieces of bread. He just wanted to be able to eat conveniently while working or playing cards. As such, the sandwich was born.

The two met up on American soil but the exact location is hotly contested. Grasping for any claim to fame there are three US states that have legislation to decree the birth of the hamburger, or more accurately, the Hamburg steak sandwich, happened inside their borders.

The two oldest claims date to 1885, and both share the story of a food vendor at a county fair. In one case a meatball vendor squashed his product flat and served it in bread so it became more portable. It was a hit. The other story is about running out of pork for sausage patty sandwiches on a busy day, and improvising a new recipe using ground beef. That too was a hit.

The second guy also claimed to have created the word “hamburger” not based on the Hamburg steak but rather that the fateful day occurred at the fair in Hamburg, New York. To me, that sounds a little too convenient.

The meatball guy dished up his sandwiches every year and came to be known as Hamburger Charlie. He even had a song and dance routine:

Hamburgers, hamburgers, hamburgers hot; onions in the middle, pickle on top. Makes your lips go flippity flop.

Another story argues the technicality that those both put a Hamburg steak between slices of bread, but the true hamburger was born when it was first placed on a bun. If you buy that, then credit is due to Grandpa Oscar Bilby of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The way his family tells the story of his first annual July 4th BBQ you’d think the man came down from the mountain with his holy grill.

Of course, Texas has its own version of the hamburger creation story, too. It probably wasn’t the first, but it did have the biggest effect when Fletch David took his sandwich on the road. The hamburger hit the big time as a favourite dish at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. And we lived fattily ever after.

-Heidi :)

Did you know...?

"The majority of the world’s population lives at or near sea level. Thus, most of the world’s bakers live near sea level. Thus, most of the world’s cookbooks and recipes were written near sea level. Turns out, this actually matters.

Since there is going to be a whole lotta baking going on in this next week I thought it timely to sound a warning to those of you in towns and cities at higher altitudes.Beware the air pressure. Low air pressure will result in overly bubbly batter, coarse texture, or worse… collapsing cakes!

Not only that, baking near the mountains means you’re cookies will dry out faster, and be your squares more likely to stick in the pan. Really, it’s amazing that us mountain-folk manage to appease our collective sweet-teeth at all.

When you are standing there is a column of air above you that is stacked on top of you. The weight of this air pushing down on your head is called air pressure. The higher up you go, the less air between you and the top of the atmosphere. When there is less weight to hold down the water, it will evaporate more quickly. There’s also less weight on your cake batter itself, so it can rise to greater heights.

The high altitude baker needs to compensate, and there are several options. You can give your cakes more structural stability by adding an extra egg or flour. Subtract a little bit of sugar or fat, not enough to make it healthy, but enough to change the chemistry. Add extra water to make up for the quicker evaporation, or simply take it out of the oven sooner."

(this post courtesy of http://lsned.com/)

Le Jour de L'action de Grace

I think it would be "false pretenses", if you will, if this blog did not include some French once in a while. So, along with some history on Thanksgiving (because who really remembers what they were taught about the Indians and Pilgrims back in Elementary school?), I will be doling out a little holiday-oriented French vocabulary! :)

THE HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING:

THE PILGRIMS
A pilgrim is someone who journeys, usually a far distance, to a place as an act of religious devotion. In this case, the pilgrims were Puritans who were being repressed from practicing their religion. They ventured forth on the Mayflower in order to make a better life where they could worship freely. Thanksgiving, to them, meant a religious holiday of giving thanks to God, usually given to fasting- not feasting.

WHERE THE HOLIDAY CAME FROM
Our current tradition combines this Puritan tradition of giving thanks, and European as well as Native American traditions of celebrating a good harvest. We celebrate a Thanksgiving after the 1621 harvest celebration the Pilgrims had in Massachusetts, sometime between September 21 and November 11 and was three days long (agreeing with European harvest festivals). During the American Revolution, a national holiday of thanksgiving was suggested to the Continental Congress, and by the mid-1800s, many states -starting with New York- had adopted the custom. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who, in 1939, proposed the holiday should be celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November.

THE FOOD
Nowadays, the traditional food associated with Thanksgiving is turkey, pumpkin pie, and mashed potatoes. Other common dishes served include stuffing, gravy, pecan pie, and cranberry sauce. The original harvest included a very different menu; historians suggest the pilgrims and indians supped over seafood (yep! like cod, eel, lobster, and oysters), nuts (chestnuts, acorns, and walnuts), venison (deer meat), indian corn, raw pumpkin, other vegetables, and different kinds of wild fowl (yes, turkey included). They ate many different kinds of meats. But pies and cranberry sauce? Nope.

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE
As far as the buildings, the pilgrims had only built seven houses, a common meeting place, and three storehouses for food and supplies. In preparation for the meals, one person would be assigned to sit for a period of hours to make sure the meat was cooked evenly over the spit (meat was commonly roasted). As for their dress, the pilgrims wore earthy tones of green, brown, gray, black, and beige. The women also wore violets, reds, and blues. The buckles we usually imagine they wore didn't even come into style until decades later. The Natives they celebrated with were of the Wampanoag tribe, along with their leader, Massasoit. The two communities ate both together separately over the few days of celebration, dining both indoors and outdoors at one time. Between meals, there was singing and dancing, as well as games.

Of course, even if the Pilgrims did not consider their meal a thanksgiving, they did give thanks. And when you're enjoying bountiful food with friends and family, how can you not be thankful?

And now, some French vocabulary ;)

Pilgrims - les pèlerins (lay peh-ler-eh)
Indians - les Indiens (lay in-dyen)
settler - un colonisateur (uh coh-lohn-ees-ah-tur)
feast - un festin (uh fest-eh)
thankful - reconnaissant (reck-on-ay-sahnt)
harvest - la récolte (lah ray-colt)

pumpkin pie - la tarte à la citrouille (lah tart ah lah sit-troo-ee)
stuffing - la farce (la farss)
turkey - la dinde (lah deend)

Thank you very much - Merci beaucoup (mare-see boh-coo)