SYSK TRENDING - Where Did the Hamburger Come From?

Few foods are as American as the hamburger. Every year, Americans eat billions of them, and they are a staple at backyard barbecues, diners, ballparks, and restaurants around the world. Yet despite being one of the most recognizable foods on the planet, no one seems to agree on where the hamburger actually came from. Like many great origin stories, the history of the hamburger has become tangled in myth, hometown pride, and competing claims. Over the years, dozens of people and places have been credited with inventing it, but separating fact from folklore isn't easy. That's what prompted award-winning author and historian Chris Carosa to approach the mystery the way a detective would—by following the evidence wherever it led. Using classic investigative techniques, Chris dug through historical records, newspaper accounts, business documents, and eyewitness reports to piece together the hamburger's true story. His research reveals how the sandwich evolved, why so many people claimed to invent it, and how it eventually became one of America's most beloved foods. Along the way, he uncovers some fascinating misconceptions and surprising twists that have kept this culinary mystery alive for more than a century. Chris Carosa is an award-winning writer, historian, and author of Hamburger Dreams: How Classic Crime Solving Techniques Helped Crack the Case of America's Greatest Culinary Mystery (https://amzn.to/2Hevorp). In this episode, he explains what the evidence really shows about the hamburger's origins, why the accepted story may be wrong, and how one simple sandwich became an enduring American icon. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  We are in the middle of summer, and almost everywhere hamburgers are being cooked on the grill. The hamburger is one of the world's most recognizable foods. But despite its name, it probably didn't come from where most people think. And its origin story is a lot more complicated than a simple trip from Germany to America. That's why today's SYSK trending topic is, where did the hamburger come from? So was the hamburger created by an ambitious cook? A clever entrepreneur? Or did it evolve over time from several different ideas? Today, we're digging into the surprising history behind this iconic sandwich with author and historian Chris Carosa.

• 2:07Mike Carruthers?

  He has spent years investigating the evidence, separating fact from legend, and uncovering the fascinating story of how the hamburger became an American icon. That's coming up right after this. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price.

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• 4:00Mike Carruthers?

  Hamburgers are about as all American as you can get. Or are they? Are hamburgers from Hamburg, Germany? And that's how they got the name? Or were they first created here in the US? There are actually several conflicting stories about where and when the hamburger first surfaced. And it's an important story because from that first hamburger has grown a huge appetite for more and a giant industry to satisfy that appetite. Writer Chris Carosa decided to do some detective work to discover just where the hamburger came from. And to try and figure out which of the several stories circulating around is the true story of the origin of the hamburger.

• 4:45Mike Carruthers?

  The results of his research is in his book, Hamburger Dreams. Hi, Chris. Welcome.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Hey, how you doing?

• 4:53Mike Carruthers?

  Great, thanks. So of all things to investigate, you chose the hamburger. How did you get this idea and decide that this was a story worth digging into?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  It's a kind of a weird story. I was a senior in college, and I was assigned to write a paper about the biography of my hometown of Buffalo, New York. And in that process, I looked at an old newspaper that said Buffalo is the place where the hamburger was made, first made. So I went and I told some of my roommates, and they said, no, New Haven was. And then I forgot about it because it wasn't, it didn't have anything to do with the subject of the paper. But I remembered it. Spent six years researching old newspapers, literature, interviewing people, trying to track down as best I could what story is most likely to be true.

• 5:43Mike Carruthers?

  Let's step back a little bit and talk about the hamburger itself. I mean, people say that hot dogs and apple pie are all American, but I bet we eat a lot more hamburgers than we eat hot dogs. How did it become so American, do you suppose?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Well, according to the research that I've done, it definitely was made in America, unlike what some people think. Some people think that it was made in Hamburg, Germany, and that's how it got its name. And I tell the story in a book that was actually told in another book about McDonald's. McDonald's in the 1960s went to Hamburg, Germany to give them some certificate thanking them for inventing the hamburger. And the mayor said, we didn't do that. So it has nothing to do with Hamburg, Germany. And it really came about in the late 1800s in America. And it was, it was, it was an invention of necessity. At that point, people were eating on the run, kind of like what we do with fast food today. But it was just beginning. And so sandwiches were very popular.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  And just the idea of putting a patty together, putting it on a, on a piece of bread and serving it, that was a new thing. And it really took off, I think, probably, say, in the 1920s, when White Castle started their fast food franchise. And it just really blossomed after World War II, when everybody came home and everybody had cars. And all of a sudden, fast food was a big thing. And the fastest of the food was the hamburger.

• 7:11Mike Carruthers?

  Since it didn't come from Hamburg, Germany, why is it called a hamburger? There's no ham in it. If you make it right, there's no ham in it. So where does that name come from?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Well, there's lots of different stories. Each origin story has a different source of the name. Some of the stories say that it was named after Hamburg, Germany, because the German immigrants invented it. But that story was associated with an origin story that, that isn't true. The most popular story has to do with the actual location of the invention, which was in Hamburg, New York. Hamburg, New York is a, is a town located just south of Buffalo, where the Erie County Fair is held every year. And in 1885, it wasn't just called the Erie County Fair. It was also called the Hamburg Fair. And all the signs said Hamburg Fair. Not just Hamburg, New York, but Hamburg Fair.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And when they invented it there, the story is, they didn't have a name for it. Somebody said, hey, this is great. What do you call it? And they said, we don't know. As we looked up, they saw Hamburg Fair. And they said, well, it's a Hamburg sandwich. And you might think, a lot of people think, oh, that's just too easy. That, that can't possibly be true. But here's what I found out. I went and I read a newspaper from 1885 that talked about that Hamburg Fair, the Erie County Fair. And it brought up an example of cheese. And it actually quoted people in this article saying, what do you call this cheese? And they said, well, let's see. We call it Hamburg cheese. So we know that that was the sort of thing that they did at that fair at that time.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  So it's possible that's probably where the name came from.

• 8:53Mike Carruthers?

  And so, why are there all these conflicting stories about the origin?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  There's no smoking gun evidence as to what actually occurred and when it occurred. So, we can't tell for sure who really made it. It's like if you ask the question, "Who invented the wheel?" Well, you know, we didn't have 24/7 news, everyone with cell phones taking pictures back in the Stone Ages, so we can't tell who invented the wheel. Same thing with the hamburger. And nobody thought it was a big deal at the time. It didn't really make the kind of splash that you might expect it something as big as this might have made. So, it went pretty much unrecorded until decades after the event occurred. Even the people who would claim to be the original inventors of the hamburger did not tell the stories until nearly a half a century after they did it.

• 9:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, isn't it possible that more than one person came up with the idea? I mean, it's not that complicated of an idea.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Actually, that's a good point, and that's how I ended the book. Oops, I gave away the ending of the book. But I tell a real story. A real story was I was a Boy Scout leader, and we had to eat breakfast on a cookout. And I didn't have any utensils. So, what I did was I fried an egg and put it in between two pancakes. And everyone thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. They'd never had it before. Little did we know that about five years earlier, McDonald's had to come up with a similar McGriddle-type sandwich. So, it's the same sort of thing, you just happen to have the same tools as everyone else, and you came up with the same idea. So, it's very possible that these inventions all occurred serendipitous of one another.

• 10:33Mike Carruthers?

  How all-American is the hamburger? It seems like you can find a hamburger in other places in the world, but that's perhaps more recent as fast food places have exported elsewhere. But have hamburgers been around in other places like they have been here?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't start in other places. They came from America. In fact, my research brought up or found a menu from the American restaurant in Manila in the Philippines. This is in the late 1890s. And on the menu was listed the Hamburg sandwich. So, it was an American cuisine that was exported over to the Philippines so that Americans can eat this sort of food that supposedly Americans eat. And it really became popular, like I said, it didn't become popular until early part of the 20th century. But after that, it really blossomed, and now it's a staple that everyone expects.

• 11:32Mike Carruthers?

  But is the hamburger so popular in the United States because people truly, truly love hamburgers? Or are hamburgers so popular because there's a lot of money to be made? And fast food companies make a lot of money selling hamburgers to people and convincing them that they're so good?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I think that's probably a chicken and egg-type question. Here's why I say that. Certainly, if you look at the standard summer barbecue, the way we imagine it right now, hamburgers are part of that equation. And hamburgers were barbecued outside by people, you know, as early as the 1890s, if not before then. So, we know that's been going on. Do we know for sure that it was this big pervasive type of culinary dish that everyone used at that time? It's kind of hard to tell. So, it's kind of hard to tell if the hamburger became popular because of fast food, or fast food became popular because of the hamburger.

• 12:35Mike Carruthers?

  And I remember, I remember my parents, and I grew up in New England, but I remember my parents sometimes referring to a hamburger as a Hamburg. "We're having Hamburgs tonight."

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. That is definitely the vernacular, the way that they called the hamburger or the hamburger when it was first invented. There are pictures that I found from various festivals and fairs that referred to hamburgers as Hamburgs. Like I said, that menu from Manila called it the Hamburg sandwich. It was difficult for me to figure out when we switched from Hamburg to Hamburger as the term that everyone preferred. But that occurred probably into, say, the 1920s, that sort of period.

• 13:23Mike Carruthers?

  Any sense as to why we added the "er" on the end?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know. I never, I never tried to figure that one out. And then the whole sense of burger coming after that, that's another change in the name, a shortened version of it. It's difficult for me to figure out exactly where that came from.

• 13:43Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I guess because it's efficient. There's no other kind of burger. There's no, well, there is now, you know, veggie burgers and chicken burgers or turkey burgers. But at the time, a burger meant hamburger, so why say the whole thing?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Right. And cheeseburger, you know, cheeseburger is another thing that people say came from Southern California. My guess is that the name cheeseburger came from Southern California. But the idea of putting cheese on a hamburger, that comes back very, very early in the story. I have a newspaper article from the Chicago Tribune, I think it is, from 1894 that makes reverence to a street vendor who was cooking hamburgers and putting cheese on them.

• 14:29Mike Carruthers?

  You know what I wonder is how that first hamburger compares to today's hamburgers in the way it looks and in any other way? And I want to ask you about that when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call "someday clothes." "I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that." Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless.

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• 16:28Mike Carruthers?

  Our SYSK trending topic today is where did the hamburger come from? I'm talking with Chris Carosa. He's author of the book, "Hamburger Dreams." So, Chris, if you were to look at that first hamburger, would you go, "Oh, yeah, that's a hamburger?" Or would you say, "What the hell is that? It doesn't look anything like a hamburger." Has the hamburger more or less stayed the same, or has it evolved?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  I think that it has evolved, and it has evolved in this way. Not so much the hamburger itself. The patty has always been a patty. It's the bread that surrounds it. So, when we think of a hamburger today, we think of a burger or a patty on a bun. And that probably didn't come around till a little later, probably in the 1890s, certainly before the Chicago, the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. The, I think that the first story that I saw said that people would cut loaves of bread and then make a wedge in them, and that's where they would put the meat.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  So, inside this wedge of bread, other stories say they put it between toast, but certainly it's regular bread that you put the hamburgers on. The bun came around a little bit later, around the 1890s. And again, the first person who did that, it's, there's a story that says someone in Oklahoma did that first. And I wasn't able to determine really the origin of the bun. But certainly by the end of the 1890s, there were, there were places that had hamburgers and buns on the menu.

• 18:07Mike Carruthers?

  And then have people always put ketchup on them and other things? Or did that?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  That's a great question. You know, everybody asks that question because you think, you know, "Oh, there's ketchup, there's onions, there's pickles, all this kind of stuff." And the answer is, no. That, in fact, some of the origin stories say it's not a hamburger if it has anything on it. That's the way they define what a hamburger is. What I could say, though, is that in the early 1900s, when they were selling hamburgers at fairs and carnivals, they did have condiments on the side.

• 18:37Mike Carruthers?

  Often, you hear hamburgers mentioned in the same sentence as hot dogs, as if they're cousins or something. "Oh, what are you having? Oh, we're having hamburgers and hot dogs." Because somehow, they go together. Why do they go together?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  There's a story, I think that there's a story that came out of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair that both hamburgers and hot dogs were invented there. And that's, that's not true. Um, and it, it, and that was actually explained well before I wrote my book. Uh, one of the, one of the other books that was written was written by a historian from Chicago, Pamela Vaccaro, who tells us about hot dogs. Hot dogs, in fact, weren't invented necessarily in America. They came over, uh, from a German immigrant, uh, whose name I can't remember right now. But for the longest time, they were considered the American dish. You know,

• 19:30Speaker 01

  America's baseball, apple pie, and hot dogs. And I think that had to do with the whole sense of how easy it was to cook hot dogs. So you can cook them very fast, serve them fast, so they make a great ballpark-type food. And, and by the way, this whole sense of fast food, the way we recognize it today, you know, I mentioned White Castle, uh, and obviously, we think of McDonald's, and Wendy's, and Burger King, and all the rest of them. But well before that, after the Civil War, there was a popularity that just sprung up of people going out to horse races, to eventually baseball games, to doing these activities outdoors. And they kind of sprung up this food vendor, uh, industry. And it's that

• 20:15Speaker 01

  industry where we got the hamburgers and hot dogs and all that kind of fun stuff. I just think that it's probably that the hot dogs were before the hamburgers. They were, they came over before, and, uh, well before the hamburger was invented. So they were a staple that people were used to seeing.

• 20:29Mike Carruthers?

  So how many stories are there that people are very firm about that know the hamburger started here? How many different origins are there?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I say that there's four and a half. And the reason why I put a half in there is because two stories overlap. Uh, there's a story about the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York, a story about Seymour, Wisconsin, a story about Athens, Texas, which came by way of the, uh, St. Louis World's Fair, and a story about a lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut.

• 21:10Mike Carruthers?

  And, and those stories are all, there are people who are very firm about each of those, that, that-

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. Yeah, they're very firm. They have the, the support of the local, uh, newspapers, or at least they had the support of the local newspapers. Each of the stories came out for different reasons. The New Haven story came out because they wanted to tear down the original lunch wagon and build a medical complex. And so a bunch of fans wrote several petitions and got it put on the New Haven, uh, uh, what do you call those, uh, historical registers, even got the Library of Congress to regi- to indicate that it was the origin of the hamburger. And the one in Athens, Texas, came out of research from a columnist at the Dallas newspaper in the early seventies, really who was spurred on

• 22:03Speaker 01

  by the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, of all things. Uh, the, the stories out of Hamburg, New York, and Seymour, Wisconsin, they actually were the first stories that were recorded. They were recorded in the twenties and thirties. They kind of, kind of fell out of favor, uh, after World War II. Nobody talked about them anymore. Maybe because they were small-market areas. Uh, but these other ones had national newspapers that really promoted them. Even the, even the New York Times got involved.

• 22:31Mike Carruthers?

  How, how did they get involved?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  They told the story about the New Haven luncheon, luncheonette, uh, Louis Lunch, that's what it was called. And in there, they spoke not only about New Haven, but they also spoke about the St. Louis story. They brought in Hamburger University from McDonald's. It's really pretty fascinating. I, I, that's where I did a lot of the research, trying to track down the origin of these stories, to see where they came from. Even the St. Louis story, which, like I said, has been discredited pretty much now. It's just fascinating why, when you go back in the newspapers, primarily after World War II, uh, up until about 10 years ago, the de facto story was that the hamburger was invented in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair.

• 23:16Mike Carruthers?

  Lastly, you'd mentioned the, the relationship between hamburgers and hot dogs. What about the relationship between hamburgers and french fries? Because have they always gone together? When did they start going together? Any story there?

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny you ask that, because in the, in the Athens, Texas story, supposedly, the person who invented hamburger, uh, from Athens, Texas, also invented the french fries, all at the St. Louis, uh, World's Fair in 1904. So that was a bit far-fetched. They, did they always go together? Not necessarily. I think that came about over time. Uh, there wasn't, again, my research didn't go into where the french fries came from. But if I look at the original plates or the original meals that came with the hamburgers, hamburgers were sold by themselves. It wasn't until when you got into the fast food business or era, that you started seeing french fries being sold with hamburgers. If you look at

• 24:16Speaker 01

  McDonald's original menu, and when I say their original menu, it's the one that predates McDonald's as we know it. It's, it's before Ray Kroc. Um, the original menu was very large and included french fries and all these other things. The, the, the thing that really brought McDonald's into the forefront was they reduced their menu to essentially hamburgers, french fries, and a, and a shake. And that's, I think, when you got that kind of juxtaposition between hamburgers and french fries.

• 24:47Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that makes sense. You know, that they, you need to sell something to go along with it, because you can make more money if you sell something, and that's, goes with it. So sell that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 24:57Mike Carruthers?

  So from your research, you're convinced that the hamburger started at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York. Others will contend that it started in New Haven. Others will contend it started in St. Louis. Others think it's Wisconsin. And we'll see where it all goes. Chris Caroso has been my guest. He is a writer and author of the book, Hamburger Dreams: How Classic Crime-Solving Techniques Helped Crack the Case of America's Greatest Culinary Mystery. And you will find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Chris.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 25:30Mike Carruthers?

  And that's today's SYSK Trending episode. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know.