ISSUE 47, THE BEST OF 2021, Part 5: The Hamburger before the Hamburger
The Hamburger before the Hamburger
There are prophesies that don’t pan out. Take this one in a San Francisco Chronicle on July 13, 1875. It appears in an overview of New York City bistros in the section on German Restaurants: “that most spurious of counterfeits, the Hamburg steak, will never be naturalized in this country” (page 1). Hamburg steak was the burger without the bun, the precondition for the Hamburger. We can think of it as Salisbury steak without the sauce. The first mention of Hamburg steak in American newspapers was much more positive, a July 22, 1872 Washington D. C travelogue of a trip to California, and an appreciation of a meal served by a German couple in their Thorp Hotel in San Francisco. “As for the Hamburg steak, that is a long way beyond my powers of description. But its tempting incense still gratifies the sense of small, and the memories of its juicy tenderness and delicious flavor will long live to tick the palate and awaken pleasant associations” [Evening Star, July 22, 1872), 2].
Hamburg steak or Hamburg beefsteak was in its earliest manifestations a decidedly Euro food item. All the earliest listings of it being offered--Thorp’s German Hotel in San Francisco (1872), Anderson’s European Hotel in Chicago (1873), The Restaurant Francaise in Salt Lake City (1874), the German Restaurant in NYC (1875)—advertise their foreignness. Was the same thing being served at each location? It is obvious from some listings that the meat was shaped into a patty and sauced with brown gravy. But a Wilmington Delaware writer of 1874 describes Hamburg steak as a variety of hash: “the meat chopped fine like a sausage, flavored delicately with onions, and broiled rapidly.” So there appear to be two versions.
So, who put the bun around version #1? Who performed the deed that would naturalize the ground meat preparation that “will never be naturalized in this country”? I’ve read the competing myths of origin. The New York Times touted the Connecticut origin theory—that a man named Lassen created the Hamburger in New Haven in 1900. The Texas thesis holds that it was created at Old Dave’s Lunch Counter on Courthouse Square in Athens TX early in the 1890s. It became nationally known when Old Dave went to St. Louis in 1904 and sold burgers at the World’s Fair. He was interviewed at that time. This tale has the backing of the historians at Hamburger University, MacDonald’s educational institution. So we have competing eastern and western origin myths. The earliest documentation is the 1904 newspaper interview of Old Dave.
As to what I believe, I don’t really care that much, but I do know that the gripability of the hamburger is what made it beloved. Bringing the thing up to your lips and giving it a shark bite.