Why there is no ham in hamburger..
For those people who have been wondering why hamburger is named such even though there isn’t a speck of ham in it, here’s your "mao bah" of the day. This topic reminded me of the scene in Pink Panther where Steve Martin couldn’t pronounce the word "hamburger" with his crisp, heavy French accent.
During a trip to Asia in the early 1800s, a German merchant from Hamburg noticed that the nomadic Tartars softened their meat by keeping it under their saddles. The meat was pounded through the motion of the horse. The idea of pounded beef found its way back to Hamburg where cooks broiled the meat and called it Hamburg meat.
German immigrants introduced the recipe to America. The term "hamburger" is believed to have appeared in 1834 on the menu from Delmonico’s restaurant in New York but there is no existing recipe for the meal.
 |
The honor of producing the first proper hamburger goes to Charlie Nagreen of Wisconsin. In 1885 he introduced the American hamburger at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour.
The first account of serving ground meat patties on buns - taking on the look of the hamburger as we know it today - took place in 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. But it was many years later, in 1921, that an enterprising cook from Wichita, Kansas, Walt Anderson, introduced the concept of the hamburger restaurant. He convinced financier Billy Ingram to invest $700 to create The White Castle hamburger chain which became an instant success. The rest of the history, we might say, belongs to McDonald’s.
And, no, a hamburger does not have any ham in it. It usually is made of 70-80% beef, and fat and spices.
