# Why Not Beefburger?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 19, 2012, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220 "2012-10-19T12:56:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Oscar2012](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oscar2012)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/1 "2012-10-19T12:56:29Z")
Why is A burger called A HAMburger? shouldn’t it be BEEFburger?
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/2 "2012-10-19T12:57:57Z")
They were named after Hamburg, Germany.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/3 "2012-10-19T13:34:54Z")
Yes, but is there any particular reason why? Ground beef patties in bread does not seem so German. Now sausages sure.
Trivia - “Salisbury Steak” was WWI’s “Freedom Fries”, substituting an Americanism (J.H. Salisbury had been a Civil War era physician who promoted an Atkins style three hamburgers a day diet) for something of mythically German origin.
And “beefburger” was apparently tried and failed in the 40s.
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### Author:  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/4 "2012-10-19T13:37:08Z")
Hamburger, Frankfurter, Berliner, how many foods do we have named after German cities?
Why no Hanoverer? Stuttgarter?
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/5 "2012-10-19T13:43:05Z")
“Hamburg steaks” were more like a meatloaf, perpared from ground beef and salt/ fillers to help preserve it on sea voyages. Food stands in Atlantic coastal ports would advertise “Hamburg-style” to tell sailors they were selling cooked (and usually seasoned) ground beef patties. The term Hamburg steak sandwiches was shortened to “hamburgers.”
The use of “burger” to mean a ground meat patty is derived from that sandwich, the sandwich was not named as a type of “burger.”
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### Author:  [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/6 "2012-10-19T13:45:50Z")
Because there is no German city called “Beefburg”?
Pretty cool name for a town, though, gotta admit.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/7 "2012-10-19T13:45:55Z")
> [@CurtC](#):
>
> Hamburger, Frankfurter, Berliner, how many foods do we have named after German cities?
There’s also Braunschweiger. And if you want to put Austria into the fold, we also have Wiener.
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/8 "2012-10-19T13:47:21Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> There’s also Braunschweiger. And if you want to put Austria into the fold, we also have Wiener.
Do you know who else wanted to “put Austria into the fold?” That’s right.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/9 "2012-10-19T13:49:46Z")
“Beefburger” is common in British English, at least when and where I lived, but I think linguistically that’s Hamburg + er \> hamburger \> burger \> {cheese, beef, veggie} + burger rather than a specific objection to Ham- sounding like “ham”. (I think the German “Ham-” means “home, homestead,” same as the English placename element -ham).
In the US I sometimes saw lamburger (lamb + burger) and in Spanish I’ve heard both “hamburguesa” (standard Spanish) and “cheeseburguesa” (really, really nonstandard).
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### Author:  [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/10 "2012-10-19T13:57:52Z")
Along those lines, I’ve often wondered why that huge early 1970’s political scandal wasn’t called something like Nixongate, Burglargate, or Hotelgate.
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### Author:  [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/11 "2012-10-19T13:59:46Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#):
>
> Because there is no German city called “Beefburg”?
>
> Pretty cool name for a town, though, gotta admit.
I’d move there, though it kind of sounds like the name of a gay bar.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/12 "2012-10-19T14:04:14Z")
> [@CurtC](#):
>
> Hamburger, Frankfurter, Berliner, how many foods do we have named after German cities?
If we include the Netherlands as somewhat ‘german-ish’ we have Gouda!
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### Author:  [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/13 "2012-10-19T14:09:46Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#):
>
> If we include the Netherlands as somewhat ‘german-ish’ we have Gouda!
And if we include the Eskimos as somewhat German-ish, we get “Blubber tartare”!
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/14 "2012-10-19T14:12:50Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#):
>
> “Hamburg steaks” were more like a meatloaf, perpared from ground beef and salt/ fillers to help preserve it on sea voyages. Food stands in Atlantic coastal ports would advertise “Hamburg-style” to tell sailors they were selling cooked (and usually seasoned) ground beef patties. The term Hamburg steak sandwiches was shortened to “hamburgers.”
>
> The use of “burger” to mean a ground meat patty is derived from that sandwich, the sandwich was not named as a type of “burger.”
Do you have a source for this? I’ve read the version that there was some German guy wanting to sell meatballs at state fairs and who figured as a hand food it would sell better smushed up in a bun (with nothing to back it up other than as a story told) but not this one before.
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/15 "2012-10-19T14:13:02Z")
> [@](#):
>
> hamburger (n.)
> 1610s, “native of Hamburg;” the meat product so called from 1884, hamburg steak, named for the German city of Hamburg, though no certain connection has ever been put forth, and there may not be one unless it be that Hamburg was a major port of departure for German immigrants to United States. Meaning “a sandwich consisting of a bun and a patty of grilled hamburger meat” attested by 1912. Shortened form burger attested from 1939; beefburger was attempted 1940, in an attempt to make the main ingredient more explicit, after the -burger had taken on a life of its own as a suffix (cf. cheeseburger, first attested 1938).
[Online Etymology Dictionary](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hamburger)
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/16 "2012-10-19T14:19:27Z")
I can find [this](http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/groundbeefhist.htm) FWIW:
> [@](#):
>
> Although the term hamburger is derived from the city in Germany, the original Hamburg steak was a piece of meat which was pounded until tender, not chopped or ground. The hamburg shows up in print in 1834 in America on the menu at New York’s Delmonico Restaurant, where Hamburg steak was a prominent item. The burger on a bun is claimed to be the concoction of Charles and Frank Menches. It seems these two vendors ran out of sandwich pork at the Erie County Fair in 1885 and switched to beef.
>
> In the late 19th century, Dr. James Henry Salisbury came up with chopped beef patties to cure Civil War soldiers sufferering from “camp diarrhea.” The patties were made of meat from disease-free animal muscle fibers with no fat, cartilage or connective tissues, seasoned, and broiled. Dr. Salisbury advocated eating beef three times a day for a healthy constitution. The term “Salisbury steak” dates back in print to 1897, and is considered a forerunner of the current hamburger.
>
> By 1902, hamburger had evolved to the meat being put twice through a grinder and mixed with onion and pepper, much closer to the hamburger we know and love today. By 1912, the hamburger as ground beef on a yeast roll had caught on, and the term burger soon stretched to include other meat and seafood cooked meat sandwiches. Cheese as a topper shows up in print at least as far back as 1938. The distinction of being the first hamburger stand belongs to White Castle whose first store opened in Wichita, Kansas in 1921.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/17 "2012-10-19T14:26:12Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#):
>
> And if we include the Eskimos as somewhat German-ish, we get “Blubber tartare”!
:dubious:
I find no cities or towns or ice floes named “Blubber” or “Tartare” on Google maps.
And my own sainted grandmother, born in the Netherlands, considered germans to be sort of like Hollanders, except they talked funny, and took orders a lot more readily than Hollanders.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/18 "2012-10-19T14:27:33Z")
Pounded meat -\* that\* sounds Germanic. I could see a restaurant making up something with cheaper beef as a take off from Wiener Schnitzel (with veal) and marketing it as “Hamburg Steak” in contrast to the better known and pricier Austrian originated veal Viennese Cutlet.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/19 "2012-10-19T14:39:17Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#):
>
> I think linguistically that’s Hamburg + er \> hamburger…
> [@Donnerwetter](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > hamburger (n.)
> > 1610s, “native of Hamburg;”
I was going to mention that. It’s not ‘Hambur + er’ (in the manner that I’m reading the post). The -er suffix indicates ‘of’ or ‘from’ (not to be confused with _aus_ or _von_). A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg. A Bonner is someone from Bonn. A Wiener is someone from Wien (Vienna). For food, it’s roughly ‘as made in’. For example, a particular sausage made in the Vienna, Austria style is _Wienerwurst_. In the U.S. these came to be known as ‘wieners’. (Note: _Wiener Schnitzel_ is not a ‘wiener’; _Schnitzel_ is a cutlet.)
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### Author:  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/20 "2012-10-19T15:12:51Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#):
>
> Do you know who else wanted to “put Austria into the fold?” That’s right.
Did he used to drive that blue car?
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