HAM – HAMBURG – HAMBURGER

While there are numerous cases to the burger royal position, there is no obvious hamburger lord or ruler. Be that as it may, regardless of the absence of recorded history, there are various contenders.

A typical misguided judgment is that the main burger was made in Hamburg, Germany. While the motivation for the cheeseburger originated from Hamburg, the sandwich idea was created a lot later. Amid the nineteenth century, Hamburg ended up acclaimed for their hamburger, from dairy animals brought up in the provincial wide open. Hamburg hamburger was ordinarily slashed, prepared and shaped into patties. Since refrigeration was not yet accessible, new meat like this must be cooked quickly. Hamburg meat accompanied a robust sticker price outside of its local land, and was regularly substituted with more affordable assortments of hamburger. At the point when gatherings of German settlers started landing in America amid the nineteenth century, many earned their business by opening eateries in expansive urban areas like Chicago and New York. It wasn’t some time before huge numbers of their menus highlighted an Americanized adaptation of the Hamburg steak– hamburger that was minced or cleaved and joined with garlic, onions, salt and pepper, at that point flame broiled or fricasseed. In 1837, New York’s Delmonico’s eatery offered a Hamburg steak on its first menu. At 10 pennies it was the costliest thing, double the expense of pork slashes, veal cutlets and meal hamburger. A German eatery at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition in 1876 served Hamburg steaks to a large number of clients.

This is the place Hamburg, Germany’s connect to America’s great burger closes. The contrast between Hamburg steaks and hamburgers as we probably are aware them today seems to be, just, the bun. Two basic bits of bread propelled the Hamburg steak into across the nation prevalence in the mid 1800’s, when numerous Americans secured mechanical positions in manufacturing plants. At the point when steam controlled industrial facilities started working during that time hours, sustenance trucks offering espresso and little nourishment things were frequently left outside. Hungry laborers would arrange nourishment through a window and eat rapidly before heading back inside to work. A couple of years after the fact, when nourishment trucks came outfitted with gas barbecues, Hamburg steaks began appearing on their menus. While all around preferred by clients, the Hamburg steak demonstrated hard to eat while standing. Putting the patty between two cuts of bread tackled this issue, and the cheeseburger sandwich was conceived. Who was the first to serve the Hamburg steak as a sandwich? The subtleties have been lost to history. Whoever it was, thinking back it may be viewed as a stroke of culinary virtuoso. By the turn of the century, the cheeseburger was at that point thought about an American exemplary.

In 1921, Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson opened the primary junk food burger foundation, White Castle, in Wichita, Kansas. Their fundamental offering was a little 5-penny burger, which they urged clients to buy “by the sack.” around then, to some degree on account of Upton Sinclair’s epic The Jungle, numerous Americans were worried about the sterile practices of the meat business. White Castle tended to the feelings of dread of their clients by outfitting their spotless, white-enlivened eateries with tempered steel ledges that could be effectively cleaned down. Their hamburger meat was ground on display, guaranteeing benefactors that they were paying for a quality feast. Around a similar time hamburgers turned into a prevalent menu thing at roadside coffee shops and soft drink shops, where they were regularly served nearby French-fries and milkshakes.

The hamburger kept on developing in notoriety all through the next decades, just enduring with the sustenance deficiencies and meat proportioning of World War II. Amid the war, American troopers carried burgers abroad with them. They were anything but difficult to make and restored a portion of the homesickness to visit the family felt by the troops. At the point when the McDonald siblings opened their Burger Bar Drive in San Bernardino, California during the 1940s, the hamburger made its official presentation in suburbia. By that late 1950s, McDonald’s had sold over 100 million hamburgers. Today, they sell over 75 hamburgers per second!

Today hamburgers can be found in about all aspects of the world. After some time the idea has developed, and meat patties are enriched with an interminable assortment of innovative, scrumptious fixings. The meat patties themselves have been supplanted with more advantageous choices, including dark bean, turkey and salmon burgers (however one may contend that these don’t generally qualify as burgers in the customary sense). Cheap food foundations have additionally turned out to be increasingly bold with their “hamburger” patties. At MOS burger in Japan you can arrange a rice burger, and McDonald’s in India built up a McAloo Tikki Burger produced using broiled potatoes and peas finished with tomatoes, onions and fiery fixings, to fulfill the dietary limitations and taste inclinations of their Hindu cafes.

Consistently, hamburgers have charmed themselves to an assortment of sustenance sweethearts. Eateries the nation over go after who can make the greatest hamburger, and culinarians compose books gave to cross-country travels looking for the absolute best burger. You can discover cheeseburgers in small gap in-the-divider burger joints and on the menus of Michelin-featured eateries. In 2005, Las Vegas restaurant Fleur de Lys outdid themselves by creating a $5,000 hamburger served with champagne. Seems a bit silly to me, but it does prove the widespread appeal of this simple and tasty sandwich. Even now they continue to evolve.

History specialists trust that minced hamburger was first eaten by Mongol horsemen (think Genghis Khan) and in the thirteenth century advanced toward Russia where it ended up known as Steak Tartare. By means of exchange courses on the Baltic Sea the crude delicacy headed out to Hamburg. By the 17th century minced meat had turned into a well-known dish of the Germans who fricasseed it or stuffed it in wieners.

The earliest mention of the forebearer of the hamburger is in a 1763 English cookbook by Hannah GlasseThe Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. She describes a smoked ‘Hamburg sausage’ made from minced beef and seasoned with suet, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, salt, wine and rum. In 1802 the Oxford English Dictionary includes a ‘Hamburg steak’ –  a slab of salted, minced beef that is slightly smoked and mixed with onions and bread crumbs.

Salted and smoked food was ideal sustenance for long sea voyages and in the 18th century the ‘Hamburg steak’ made its way across the Atlantic. Ships of the Hamburg-America line brought thousands of immigrants to the New World and soon Hamburg-style beef patties were served from eating stands in New York.

Fun fact: the Germans have never called this dish ‘Hamburg steak’, instead it’s known as ‘Frikadelle’ or ‘Bulette’.

Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut claims to have invented the hamburger back in 1900 when a customer hurriedly asked for a quick meal he could take on the run. Charlie Nagreen sandwiched a meatball between two slices of bread in 1885, creating what was known as a “Hamburger Charlie.” Frank and Charles Menches supposedly invented the hamburger in 1885 in Hamburg, New York, when the brothers ran out of the sausages they were selling and were forced to use ground beef.

In 1904, it was said that the hamburger gained popularity at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, where it was sold by Fletcher Davis, a fry cook. In 1916, Walter Anderson, another fry cook, invented the hamburger bun, creating what resembles the hamburger we know today. Anderson became the co-founder of White Castle.

Today, hamburgers are practically work of art for chefs. Like art, there are no rules to how we create our hamburger concoctions, from the patty to the bun, and especially the toppings.

71% of all beef consumed in restaurants is in the form of a burger

60% of all sandwiches sold in the U.S. are hamburgers

Americans eat roughly 14 billion burgers per year

It contains 0% ham

Research Sources:

  1. Lincoln, Mary J. (1833). Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book – What to Do and What Not to Do In Cooking. Republished 2008, Applewood Books, Carlisle, Mass.
  2. Lubin, Gus and Bedkar, Mamta (2011). 15 Facts About McDonalds That Will Blow Your Mind. Business Insider, Web. 4 Aug 2013.
  3. Ozersky, Josh (2008). The Hamburger: A History. Yale University Press, US.
  4. Smith, Andrew F. (2008). Hamburger: A Global History. Reaktion Books Ltd, London, UK.
  5. Smith, Andrew F. (2007). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press, New York, New York.
5 years ago