# 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:** 19
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/21 "2012-10-19T15:17:21Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#):
>
> Along those lines, I’ve often wondered why that huge early 1970’s political scandal wasn’t called something like Nixongate, Burglargate, or Hotelgate.
Nowadays they’d name it after the hotel and call it “Watergategate.”
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> A Hamburger is someone from Hamburg.
_Ich bin ein Hamburger_. I think someone famous said that.
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/22 "2012-10-19T15:24:07Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#):
>
> in Spanish I’ve heard both “hamburguesa” (standard Spanish) and “cheeseburguesa” (really, really nonstandard).
I usually see the latter billed as _quesoburguesa_.
Interestingly, Spanish has derived the names of two other beef dishes, _bistec_ and _rosbif_, from English. (Although _bistec_ doesn’t necessarily mean beef, just a “steak” of some sort. You can get _bistec de puerco_, for example.)
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### Author:  [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/23 "2012-10-19T16:20:07Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> 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.)
I don’t quite understand your post. I meant “Hamburg” [the city] + “er” [the suffix], as opposed to the folk etymology of “ham” [the food] + “burger” [unexplained].
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/24 "2012-10-19T16:49:57Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#):
>
> I don’t quite understand your post. I meant “Hamburg” [the city] + “er” [the suffix], as opposed to the folk etymology of “ham” [the food] + “burger” [unexplained].
Only that as I read it, there was no indication of where ‘+ er’ came from. As **Donnerwetter** cited, ‘Hamburger’ is ‘a native of Hamburg’ So I would have posted ‘Hamburger (a native of Hamburg) \> hamburger \> burger \> {cheese, beef, veggie} + burger’. The rest of my post was replying to the OP, saying that \*\*Donnerwetter[/b[ beat me to it.
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### Author:  [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/25 "2012-10-19T17:52:19Z")
Get in line. Horse meat still needs _a_ name.
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/26 "2012-10-19T18:46:10Z")
It’s worth pointing out that AFAIK the dish which is today known as a “Hamburger”, i. e. a piece of meat wrapped between two slices of bread, has no German origins at all. In Germany, a Hamburger is considered **the** archetypical American food.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/27 "2012-10-19T19:05:12Z")
We couldn’t just start calling McDonaldland’s most notorious larsonist the “Beefburglar”, could we?
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/28 "2012-10-19T19:11:09Z")
Yeah and chop suey is not from China and flaming saganki isn’t from Greece. It’s marketing baby.
Hence the apparent origin of the “Hamburg steak” in 1834 at New York’s Delmonico Restaurant (pounded meat like a Wiener Schnitzel, i.e. Viennese Cutlet, but not veal and not breaded, and likely a cheap cut, but fancy because it’s “foriegn” … sounding).
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/29 "2012-10-19T20:04:19Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> I can find [this](http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/groundbeefhist.htm)
>
> 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.
Please don’t believe all of the above.
There is no extant copy of a menu from Delmonico’s in 1834. Period.
The Menches did NOT invent the hamburger sandwich. Period.
White Castle is, indeed, the oldest hamburger chain in the US. That’s true and the date is correct.
The original Hamburger steak, which indeed goes back to the mid-1800s(at least) was a pounded, tenderized beef steak. The dicing of the meat prior to the developement of the meat grinder occured in or around the 1870s.
There were hamburgers as we know them today around in the late 1880s, early 1890s. No one invented them. They simply developed independently.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/30 "2012-10-19T21:30:43Z")
It would have been nice if you had offered up a cite with such confident claims.
I do not find it at all hard to believe a writer’s claim about a menu from 1834 although of course it could be made up. A claim that an extant menu or some contemporaneous report of such a menu does not exist “period” I find harder to accept honestly. Certainly [Delmonico’s _claims_](http://www.delmonicosny.com/about,84,26,Delmonico's_Firsts.html) to have been the first to have used the phrase “Hamburg Steak.”
> [@](#):
>
> Delmonico’s Firsts … Hamburger (known then as the Hamburg Steak)
Meanwhile, though I’ve also found [this](http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/HamburgerHistory.htm), which states
> [@](#):
>
> In the late eighteenth century, the largest ports in Europe were in Germany. Sailors who had visited the ports of Hamburg, Germany and New York, brought this food and term “Hamburg Steak” into popular usage. To attract German sailors, eating stands along the New York city harbor offered “steak cooked in the Hamburg style.”
>
> In 1802, the Oxford English Dictionary defined Hamburg steak as salt beef. It had little resemblance to the hamburger we know today. It was a hard slab of salted minced beef, often slightly smoked, mixed with onions and breadcrumbs. The emphasis was more on durability than taste.
>
> Immigrants to the United States from German-speaking countries brought with them some of their favorite foods. One of them was Hamburg Steak. The Germans simply flavored shredded low-grade beef with regional spices, and both cooked and raw it became a standard meal among the poorer classes. In the seaport town of Hamburg, it acquired the name Hamburg steak. Today, this hamburger patty is no longer called Hamburg Steak in Germany but rather “Frikadelle,” “Frikandelle” or “Bulette,” orginally Italian and French words.
>
> According to Theodora Fitzgibbon in her book The Food of the Western World - An Encyclopedia of food from North American and Europe:
>
> The originated on the German Hamburg-Amerika line boats, which brought emigrants to America in the 1850s. There was at that time a famous Hamburg beef which was salted and sometimes slightly smoked, and therefore ideal for keeping on a long sea voyage. As it was hard, it was minced and sometimes stretched with soaked breadcrumbs and chopped onion. It was popular with the Jewish emigrants, who continued to make Hamburg steaks, as the patties were then called, with fresh meat when they settled in the U.S.
>
> The Origin of Hamburgers and Ketchup, by Prof. Giovanni Ballarini:
>
> The origin of the hamburger is not very clear, but the prevailing version is that at the end of 1800’ s, European emigrants reached America on the ships of the Hamburg Lines and were served meat patties quickly cooked on the grill and placed between two pieces of bread.
And
> [@](#):
>
> Many historians claim the first printed American menu was in 1826 on New York’s Delmonico’s Restaurant. Ellen Steinberg, Ph.D, of Illinois sent me the following information from the Nutrition Today Magazine, Volume 39, January/February 2004, pp 18-25:
>
> Food in American History, Part 6 - Beef (Part 1): Reconstruction and Growth Into the 20th Century (1865-1910), by Louis E. Grivetti, PhD, Jan L. Corlett, PhD, Bertram M. Gordon, PhD, and Cassius T. Lockett, PhD:
>
> Others have written the first hamburger - specifically hamburger steak - was served in 1834 at Delmonico’s Restaurant, New York City, for $.10. However, this oft-quoted origin is not based on the original Delmonico menu but rather a facsimile, and it can be demonstrated through careful scholarship that the published facsimile could not be correct, because the printer of the purported original menu was not in business in 1834!
They also cite an English cookbook reference to Hamburgh Sausage in 1758 and Hamburg Steak in an 1844 one.
They further relay the stories of the meatball vendor I had previously heard and the claim of the Menches brothers’ family both dating to 1885.
I am not sure if there is more definitive scholarship available. Are you?
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/31 "2012-10-19T22:51:27Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> It would have been nice if you had offered up a cite with such confident claims.
>
> I do not find it at all hard to believe a writer’s claim about a menu from 1834 although of course it could be made up. A claim that an extant menu or some contemporaneous report of such a menu does not exist “period” I find harder to accept honestly. Certainly [Delmonico’s _claims_](http://www.delmonicosny.com/about,84,26,Delmonico's_Firsts.html) to have been the first to have used the phrase “Hamburg Steak.”
>
> Meanwhile, though I’ve also found [this](http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/HamburgerHistory.htm), which states
> They further relay the stories of the meatball vendor I had previously heard and the claim of the Menches brothers’ family both dating to 1885.
>
> I am not sure if there is more definitive scholarship available. Are you?
Yes. And I contribute to it over at the American Dialect Society and other places.
I’m the world’s leading authority on the Menches Brothers.
The seller of “meatballs” was Charles Nagreen of Wisconsin.
Your cookbook cites are less than scholarly. While some of them do cite scholarly texts, the actual cites are never contemporary and usually only appear in the 20th century.
I’ll give you some better cites/info later tonight.
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### Author:  [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/32 "2012-10-20T00:33:21Z")
> [@samclem](#):
>
> I’m the world’s leading authority on the Menches Brothers.
I freaking love this messageboard! Where else on the internet could you read something like this and believe it unhesitatingly?
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### Author:  [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/33 "2012-10-20T01:43:43Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Only that as I read it, there was no indication of where ‘+ er’ came from. As **Donnerwetter** cited, ‘Hamburger’ is ‘a native of Hamburg’ So I would have posted ‘**Hamburger (a native of Hamburg) \> hamburger** \> burger \> {cheese, beef, veggie} + burger’.
That’s right, though. The hamburger wasn’t named after the residents of Hamburg, so the bold link didn’t occur. It was named after the city itself, so **Hamburg (the city) -\> hamburger (the food)** and **Hamburg (the city) -\> Hamburger (the people)** are in parallel, not sequential.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/34 "2012-10-20T02:20:19Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> I do not find it at all hard to believe a writer’s claim about a menu from 1834 although of course it could be made up. A claim that an extant menu or some contemporaneous report of such a menu does not exist “period” I find harder to accept honestly. Certainly [Delmonico’s _claims_](http://www.delmonicosny.com/about,84,26,Delmonico's_Firsts.html) to have been the first to have used the phrase “Hamburg Steak.”
Whoa! I just went and looked at that website. Their claims are a joke.
[quote=
Delmonico’s]
First use of the expression that something is “86’d”, since the Delmonico Steak was item 86 on the menu and, when sold out, it was “86’d” (according to the Restaurant Report, Foodudes and Ask Dave)
[/quote]
What a load of crap! Show me the menu with a Delmonico steak as item 86. No one can. At least, not before 1933. That’s the earliest print cite for 86=out of an item. It was soda fountain lingo which was part of a long system of numbers as shorthand.
> [@Delmonico's](#):
>
> • The first diner called by the French name restaurant
. Well, since they say they were there since 1837, and the first cite in the OED for restaurant in the US is 1821, someone must have beaten them to it.
So on and so on.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/35 "2012-10-20T03:01:21Z")
[Menches Brothers](http://menchesbros.net/History.html). A restaurant in Akron, Ohio. Where I’ve lived since 1971. Not only do they claim that they invented the hamburger, they claim they invented the ice cream cone! At a time in the past, family members suggested they invented cracker jack, but under a different name.
Fact: No single person “invented” the hamburger sandwich as we kinow it today–ground beef, cooked/grilled, and placed between slices of bread or on a bun.
But, there are four main contenders who suggest they were the first.
> **[History of the hamburger in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_hamburger_in_the_United_States)**
>
> A hamburger (or burger) is a sandwich that consists of a cooked ground meat patty, usually beef, placed between halves of a sliced bun. Hamburgers are often served with various condiments, such as dill relish (condiment), mayonnaise, and other options including lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and cheese.
> The Texas historian Frank X. Tolbert attributes the invention of the hamburger to Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas. Davis is believed to have sold hamburgers at his café at 115 Tyler Street in...
1. Fletcher Davis of Texas(1880) All of his _bona fides_ were invented by a local Texas historian name Frank X Tolbert. All were based on third and fouth-hand recollections from people in the mid 1950s. Supposedly he invented it at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Waaaaay too late to be the invention date.
2. Menches Brothers, Akron OHIO. Invented at an 1885 Hamburg(NY) county fair. Get it…_Hamburg NY_, let’s call it a _hamburger_. :o Guess they forgot those stories they told the local Akion Beacon Journal writers back in the 1930s, the ones where they invented it at the 1892 Summit County Fair. Whoops!
More tomorrow night.
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### Author:  [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/36 "2012-10-20T07:43:55Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Immigrants to the United States from German-speaking countries brought with them some of their favorite foods. One of them was Hamburg Steak. The Germans simply flavored shredded low-grade beef with regional spices, and both cooked and raw it became a standard meal among the poorer classes. In the seaport town of Hamburg, it acquired the name Hamburg steak. Today, this hamburger patty is no longer called Hamburg Steak in Germany but rather “Frikadelle,” “Frikandelle” or “Bulette,” orginally Italian and French words.
I can confirm this part. This is the way my mother used to prepare meatballs, with onions, soaked breadcrumbs and different spices. They are indeed called Frikadellen in my neck of the woods and Buletten in Berlin. But I have never heard about a special connection to the city of Hamburg.
The idea, though, of wrapping them between slices of bread, seems to have been cooked up (so to speak) in America.
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### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/37 "2012-10-20T11:51:28Z")
I wonder what they call ground pork patties put between a pair of buns…
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/38 "2012-10-20T12:33:38Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#):
>
> I wonder what they call ground pork patties put between a pair of buns…
Sausage.
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### Author:  [@FluffyBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FluffyBob)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-not-beefburger/638220/39 "2012-10-20T17:57:17Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#):
>
> Do you know who else wanted to “put Austria into the fold?” That’s right.
heh.
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