On
July 28, 1900, a hungry customer rushed into Louis Lassen's luncheonette in New Haven, CT, and asked for something that he could eat on
the run. Lassen slapped a broiled beef patty between two slices of bread and invented the hamburger.
Or did he? There's an old saying that "success has a hundred fathers, while
failure is an orphan," and nowhere is that adage truer than in the
question of exactly who invented the hamburger. Given its phenomenal
success (Americans alone consume some forty billion per year), it's not surprising that there are
at least three other claimants to the title "Father of the
Hamburger."
The earliest contenders seem to be the Menches brothers (Frank and Charles), itinerant sandwich vendors
who traveled the state- and county-fair circuit at the end of the 19th century.
In 1895, they ended up at the Buffalo Fair at the Hamburg Fairgrounds. Local butchers were unable to provide the boys
with their usual pork sausages, so they substituted ground beef flavored with
"coffee beans and brown sugar, and other ingredients that remain a
secret" (yum!). The sandwich became a hit and took its name from the
venue, which would seem to end the controversy.
Except that, also in 1895, Charlie Nagreen was trying to sell meatballs at the Seymour Fair in Seymour, WI. The fair was a hit, but Nagreen was not. Meatballs are tasty, but aren't necessarily easy to eat
while walking through a fair. Charlie was seized with the idea of making them
more portable by smashing them between, yes, two slices of bread, and they
immediately became a hit. Since loaves with ground beef, known as "Hamburg steaks," (named after the city in Germany) were a popular meal, Nagreen named
his invention the "Hamburger sandwich," which was soon shortened to "hamburger."
The least-likely innovator was Fletcher Davis, who owned a lunch counter in Athens, TX (the self-proclaimed "Black-Eyed Pea Capital of
the World").
Davis, according to oral reports, had been serving a ground-beef sandwich as
early as the 1880s. He claimed to have sold the sandwich at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis (where the sandwich was undoubtedly served --
the New York Tribune wrote about the sensation it caused), but
unfortunately, there’s no hard evidence to prove that Davis was the man serving
them. (Though McDonald's does give the St. Louis credit for serving the burger, in spite of the earlier
documented examples.)
Regardless of who invented the
hamburger,
it's become as much a part of American culture as, well, apple pies and the hot dog (and don’t get us started on who invented that) -- from backyard cookouts and drive-ins to such noted fanciers as J. Wellington Wimpy and Forsthye P. (Jughead)
Jones.
The sandwiches range in size from normal to large to beyond jumbo to ridiculous, and while some of us are satisfied with just
one, there are some folks who can finish off 103 sliders (in eight minutes!) or a 9-pound giant in less than half an hour.
But if you don't mind, all this burger talk has made us hungry. We'll take ours medium with
ketchup, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, pickles, and a touch of mustard, please.
Suggested Sites...
- Louis' Lunch - where the hamburger was invented.
- Menches Brothers - news about the other inventors of the hamburger.
- Home of the Hamburger - another place where the hamburger was invented.
- Inventor of the Original Hamburger - and yet one more.
- Hamburger America - burger blog with ketchup, mustard -- and opinions.
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