Were ancient Romans chowing on cheeseburgers? Fire up the grill and save your appetite, because we're
digging deep into the meaty history of perhaps the most iconic food ever: the hamburger.
The American obsession with hamburgers has been ongoing for almost 120 years,
but how did it start? As the traditional story goes, the hamburger seems to have
burst into the American psyche at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. But exactly
how it came to be there is heavily disputed. According to Texas Monthly,
it was a man named "Uncle Fletch" from Athens, Texas who brought his beef sandwiches to
Missouri and kicked the craze off. However, that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
The Washington Post relays another old tale that the first hamburger was made
on a whim at a Connecticut diner. In the end, competing "world's first hamburger" stories
begin to crop up between 1880 and the World's Fair in 1904, but few stand up to scrutiny.
What's not debatable is that hamburgers certainly entered the American consciousness
around the turn of the century, give or take a few years. Interestingly, ground beef was
considered something of a health food at the time, thanks to Dr. James Salisbury,
namesake of Salisbury Steak. Diseases killed more men than combat during the American Civil War,
with dysentery being one of the biggies, so Salisbury set about
investigating the perfect diet. He concluded that soldiers needed more meat and that it
ought to be pre-chopped to ease digestion. Those patties are documented, discussed, and dated,
but because there's no bread involved, they're left out of burger discussions.
One of the ways food historians trace the story of a dish is to follow its name backward through
time. The town of Hamburg, in upstate New York, relies on this impulse to lay claim
to the hamburger, which they say was first made at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg in 1885. However,
there is another Hamburg with a compelling counter narrative.
The city of Hamburg, Germany, has been an important trading center for almost
1,000 years. By the middle of the 1800s, it was Germany's most important port economically, and if
you were in Central or Eastern Europe and wanted to make it to America, Hamburg was your gateway
to the New World. But well before that, a 1747 English cookbook included a recipe for "Hamburgh
sausage," which called for ground and smoked beef spiced with nutmeg and served with toasted bread.
This long-standing connection gives credence to reports that migrants passing through
the city would have encountered and been comforted by bread rolls full of hot beef,
both on the streets of Hamburg and on the decks of the Hamburg-American Line ships. It
also links the burger with the American dreams of those migrants, as well as their memories
of leaving home, which potentially explains why the "Hamburger" branding resonated with so many.
The Mongolian armies of Genghis Khan conquered much of the known world by horseback. Their
homelands were harsh, huge, and hard to hunt; their reputation as barbarians was second to none;
and their association with horseback riding endures in modern times. With all that in mind,
the rumor that these hordes of horse lords placed slices of horsemeat beneath their
saddles each day to store, tenderize, and cook the precious protein doesn't
seem too far-fetched at first glance. This technique is supposedly the origin of both
steak tartare and hamburgers, but the evidence to support this tale is weak.
We can believe that Mongol army rations would have been bleak at times. It's much harder to
believe that just because they were scary, these horse warriors could somehow stomach
severe food poisoning. They would quickly have realized that keeping a steak between
a saddle and a horse doesn't slow cook it, it just coats it in sweat and hair and keeps
it at the perfect temperature for bacteria to grow, rendering the meat unsafe to eat.
"Wow, that's f—ing disgusting."
This still overlooks the point that cavalrymen cooking steak by saddle
each day makes about as much sense as an infantryman cooking a potato by putting
it in their boots as they march. Food safety issues notwithstanding,
there are simply too many downsides to this technique to believe the burger began this way.
Despite being separated by millennia, there are many obvious parallels between
Ancient Rome and the United States, not least because many aspects of the
U.S. Constitution were inspired by the way the Roman Republic was run. But few
people realize that the Romans also had their version of fast-food restaurants,
called "thermopolia," as well as their own unique recipe for something close to an ancient burger.
"De Re Coquinaria" is the oldest collection of recipes to survive
from Roman times. Many refer to the book by the name "Apicius," who was supposedly the
author — though he died centuries before the book was compiled. Nevertheless,
his reputation as a gourmand has lasted 2,000 years, and in the book that bears his name,
historians have found what many consider to be the first burger recipe. Known as Isicia Omentata,
these patties were made of ground meat, made richer with pine nuts, spices, and flavored
with wine and garum— Rome's favorite condiment, which roughly resembled modern Thai fish sauce.
If the idea of a red wine-enriched burger makes your mouth water, there are more modern methods
to get booze into your bun. No less an American culinary icon than Julia Child recommended making
a rich bone marrow and red wine sauce to take her burgers to the next level.
The earliest claim on the invention of the hamburger comes from the city of Xi'an in
Shaanxi province, China. This ancient metropolis is one of the historical
capitals of Imperial China. It's home to the world-famous terracotta army,
and was the end of the ancient Silk Road trading route that spanned the deserts
and mountains of Central Asia to connect China with Europe and the Arab world. It's also the
home of the street food snack that many have dubbed the "Chinese hamburger" — Rou Jia Mo.
The literal translation means "meat in a bun", and that is exactly what you should
expect! These chewy, pan-grilled buns are split in half and stuffed with a heavily
seasoned mixture of chopped meat. Pork is the most popular filling in China these days,
but thanks to the Silk Road and the long history of Muslim influence along its route, beef has also
often been a common option in Shaanxi. People have been making the bread for Rou Jia Mo since
the Qin dynasty, and the meat filling has an even longer history. Although nobody can
lay claim to inventing the dish, historians are comfortable dating it as far back as 221-206 BCE.
However you slice the distant past, the fact is that the burger began to
gain mass appeal at the turn of the 20th century. But there would be one
more stumbling block before the hamburger could claim world domination — reputation.
Just a few months after the World's Fair gave hamburgers their big break,
public demand for ground beef products fell off a cliff thanks to "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair,
released in 1905. Sinclair hoped to spark a conversation about the plight of immigrant
workers and the devastating conditions that they were forced into — however,
what sparked a reaction from the public were his stomach-churning callouts of
what the meatpacking industry was serving to the public and calling "ground beef."
"The book describes mold-covered meat that's washed off in a bath
of borax and then goes back into the food supply."
The outrage was sufficient to move Congress to pass food safety laws by June 1906,
though this didn't save ground beef from a reputation as practically poisonous.
One man managed to turn the narrative around though. Edgar Waldo "Billy" Ingram,
the founder of White Castle, saw an opportunity in the burger business and built their whole brand
around hygiene and quality control. White tiles, clean kitchens, and nearly-identical burgers in
each location were their hallmarks and made White Castle the first-ever fast-food chain.
Thanks to clever advertising and the consistent message of safety and quality, Ingram managed
to rehabilitate the image of the burger, as well as reinvent the restaurant for the 20th century.
White Castle may have been the first fast-food chain, but it certainly wasn't the last. Most of
the big names in burgers began their businesses in the years immediately following World War
II. America was in the ascendancy, an industrial, modern nation, fueled by industrial, modern foods.
"Four hamburgers to take out." "Chop up four cows to be convoyed."
The rise of the chains was catalyzed by the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which fundamentally
changed how American people worked and traveled. The cross-continental sprawl of highways across
America meant that chains could provide the same quintessential American comfort food for mere
cents to anyone around the country. Shared food customs are a fundamental part of nation-building,
and a deep association formed between burgers and car culture at the heart of '50s Americana.
*guy in a diner aggressively taking a bite*
It wasn't just that burgers were convenient, tasty, and cheap — there was a more practical
aspect to their spread as well. As America built more and more roads, commuting to work became a
much more attractive prospect, and the suburban building boom began. These new neighborhoods
were leafy, spacious, and modern, but lacked the facilities and infrastructure that older,
more established towns had. Fast food franchises stepped into the gap that
was left when developers built suburbs with no restaurants or grocery stores,
and now several generations of Americans have grown up on suburban McDonalds'.
In 1954, businessman Ray Kroc visited a restaurant run by two brothers in San Bernardino,
California. You might have seen the story in "The Founder." After seeing crowds queuing up
ahead of the opening, and the efficiency of their burger assembly line system,
he convinced the McDonald brothers to franchise their business. Needless to say,
the idea worked. There are now over 38,000 McDonalds' restaurants in over 100 countries.
Franchising allowed McDonald's to innovate — items like the Egg McMuffin and the Big Mac
were the brainwaves of individual owners that hit the big time. However, the most iconic
technical innovation in burger-slinging wasn't a McDonald's idea at all. In 1970, Wendy's changed
fast food culture forever by adding the "pick up window" — aka the first modern drive-thru.
Although eating in your car was normal enough, until the '70s people would
park and walk up to the counter to order. Sometimes car hops would take your order
and then bring your food to you, but that era mostly ended with the drive-thru. Now,
over 70 percent of McDonald's U.S. business is conducted via the drive-thru window.
Rather than debating who put meat on bread first, it is perhaps better to think about how,
as Freakonomics pointed out, the fast food cheeseburger might be the best food in human
history. Instead of worrying about where it came from, should we consider the question
of why this combination of ground meat and bread has had such historic success?
After the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, it seemed as if the forces of American globalization
were ushering in a new boom time that merged '50s nostalgia with the global technology of the 20th
century. The perfect metaphor for this was the humble burger. The memories evoked by eating a
hamburger linked it to the halcyon past. Constant promotional tie-ins with the latest movies, bright
colors, and new jingles allowed burger chains to stay relevant to newer generations worldwide.
"We interrupt regular programming for this McDonald's commercial break."
Whether Ray Kroc, Billy Ingram, or some other businessman led the drive to streamline and
standardize restaurant workflows, it was always the customers whose worries, stresses,
and triumphs truly made the burger an American success story. We crave the
freedom of the open road, and we crave the comforts of home. The burger brings us both.