HAMBURG(ER)

Have no idea how I came across the story "Hamburgers and Fries" on the NPR website, but if one takes the article at face value it answers the question of what role Hamburg, Germany played in the naming of the hamburger. The gist is:


The true story of the hamburger's origins is more prosaic. Of course Hamburg, Germany, plays a role. But the real action takes place in America, where Hamburg steaks beget hamburg steaks, hamburgs, hamburgers, and, finally -- by means of the cumulative effects of distillatory coinage -- burgers.

The writings of epicurean Louis Szathmary reveal that, by the late 1700s, sausages of minced and seasoned beef were known to the British as Hamburg sausages. By as early as 1834, the menu of Delmonico's in New York City advertised a Hamburger steak. The circa 1850 popularization of the commercially produced meat grinder provided further propulsion.

Newspaper morgues yielded more clues. An 1889 edition of the Walla Walla Union of Washington State describes a hash house where patrons learned their choices from a barker who chanted "porkchopsbeefsteakhamandeggshamburgsteakorliver." In addition to confirming that Hamburg steak had, by the late 1800s, become part of the American vernacular, the Walla Walla reference illustrates that the proto-burger had achieved bicoastal status.

A 1900 article in the New York Sun reveals, interestingly, that the term "Hamburg steak" did not resonate back in Germany: "When in Hamburg, we supposed we must do as the Hamburgers did," reported a European correspondent. "[S]o at our first meal, we asked for Hamburg steak. Besides, we wanted to see how that viand would taste upon its native heath... But to all our requests, couched in our best scholastic German, the waiter shook his head. Like many another prophet, the Hamburg steak was apparently without honor in its own country... 'Oh well,' we said, 'just bring us an ordinary beef steak.' But lo and behold, when the meat was served, there it was all chopped up and made into small cakes -- what Americans call in fact, 'Hamburg steak!'"

To a resident of Hamburg, Germany, at the cusp of the twentieth century, fried cakes of minced beef and chopped onions, bound with a bit of egg or bread crumbs, were steaks. Not Hamburg steaks. Not steaks cooked in the Hamburg style. Just steaks. No further explanation is needed. That's how it's done around Hamburg. Only in a foreign land like America is the modifier Hamburg required to make an eater's preferences known.


For the full story, Ghengis Khan and all, click here.

And I now recall that when we were growing up "Grandma Jan" always made hamburgers in the Hamburg style -- mixing in eggs, breadcrumbs, etc., almost like a meatloaf-- probably more to make the relatively expensive meat go farther in a family of seven. Nonetheless, yummy!



Ich bin ein Hamburger.