If you’re lucky, you’ll get to spend at least part of the holiday weekend firing up a grill and enjoying some tasty treats. Have you ever wondered where our backyard barbecue favorites got their names, though? Was the Oscar Meyer from the hot dog package a real guy or a clever marketing invention? Let’s take a look at a few etymologies and histories behind the food on your (paper) plate.
1. Hamburger
Hamburger takes its name from the German city of Hamburg. A dish of salted chopped beef was popular with the residents of the port city, and when Hamburg’s residents—who are known as Hamburgers—began to immigrate to the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought the Hamburg steak concoction with them.
Delmonico’s steakhouse in New York City claims to have served the first American version of the hamburger steak during the 1830s, while Louis’ Lunch in New Haven boasts that it served the first hamburger sandwich to a rushed patron in 1900.
2. Hot Dogs
The etymology of the name “hot dog” is every bit as mysterious as the meat that’s actually in the sausage casing. A popular explanation tells a story of newspaper cartoonist Tad Dorgan seeing vendors at New York’s Polo Grounds selling sausages to baseball fans and labeling them “hot dogs” in a 1901 cartoon.
The only problem with that story is that the term “hot dog” was around well before 1901. The Yale Record had published a story in 1895 that included a poem about the hot dogs sold by campus food trucks, and the slang usage of “hot dog” for someone prone to showing off dates to about the same era.
In all likelihood, the name arose from accusations that sausage makers filled out their wares with dog meat; these claims date back at least as far as 1845. Thanks to these accusations, by the late 19th century “dogs” had become slang for the inexpensive sausages cash-strapped college students could pick up from vendors near their schools.
The names “wiener” and “frankfurter” come from the presence of similar sausages in Vienna, Austria—which is Wien in German—and Frankfurt, Germany.
3. Bratwurst
The popular sausages are taken from the German brat for “finely chopped meat” and wurst for “sausage.”
4. Flat Iron Steak
This trendy, tasty cut is a fairly recent development. In the early 2000s, meat science professors at the University of Nebraska and the University of Florida searched cattle with a fine-toothed comb in the hopes of finding an exquisite new cut they could bring to market. After much research, they found an underappreciated muscle in the shoulder that would provide a delicious, well-marbled piece of beef if cut correctly. The new cut was dubbed the “flat iron steak,” supposedly because it is shaped somewhat like an old-fashioned flat iron.
5. Porterhouse Steak
The origin of the term “porterhouse” is surprisingly contentious, as several cities and establishments claim to have coined it. There’s some evidence that it might have originated on Manhattan’s Pearl Street around 1814, when porter house proprietor Martin Morrison started serving particularly large T-bones. The Oxford English Dictionary lists this etymology as the likely origin of the steak’s name while noting that there’s no contemporary evidence to support or contradict the tale.
This origin story gained traction in the late 19th century, but others contend a Cambridge, Massachusetts, hotel and restaurant proprietor named Zachariah B. Porter lent his name to the cut of beef. Still others claim that the steak takes its name from the Porter House, a popular hotel in 19th-century Flowery Branch, Georgia.
6. Ketchup
What about that other grilling essential, ketchup? The word “catchup” has been in the English language since the 17th century, but it didn’t always refer to the delicious tomato sauce we all love. Although the etymology of the word is debated, many scholars think that it may have originated as a Chinese word for a fish sauce in the Amoy dialect. It’s unclear whether the word entered the English language directly from the Amoy or through the Malay word kichap, which itself is borrowed from the Amoy dialect.
Wherever the word originated, it didn’t originally refer to the delightful condiment we wolf down by the packet. Tomato ketchup didn’t appear until the late 18th or early 19th centuries; the original “ketchup” in the English world was more usually more of a briny mixture that was often made from mushrooms or nuts.
7. Oscar Mayer
The name on the side of the Wienermobile came from an actual guy. Oscar Ferdinand Mayer immigrated to the United States from Bavaria as a teenager during the 1870s. After originally living with a cousin in Detroit, Mayer moved to Chicago in 1876 and worked as a butcher at a North Side meat market. Seven years later he started his own sausage shop with his brother Gottfried, who had been living back in Germany and learning the skills of a “wurstmacher.”
The Mayer brothers’ business was a runaway success with the German immigrants in their Chicago neighborhood. By 1888 the business was so strong that their landlord refused to renew their lease and tried to open his own sausage shop in their storefront. (Big surprise: it failed.) The Mayer brothers kept cranking out meats from a new factory, though, and thanks to a savvy marketing plan that involved sponsoring polka bands, their brand moved nationwide within a few decades.
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brat means fried, grilled or roasted in german (the verb is braten)- so a bratwurst means a fried or grilled sausage.
posted by Laura on 7-1-2010 at 3:55 pm
The original Little Oscar, who drove in the weinermobile, was portrayed by Meinhardt Raabe, who also played the coroner in The Wizard of Oz.
posted by Steven on 7-1-2010 at 4:45 pm
according to a recent Good Eats Episode, Porterhouse refers to the place (house) where port (beer) was served, and the meat that went with it.
AB does a better job explaining it then I do.
posted by Chris on 7-1-2010 at 5:16 pm
I recently found out that Pam from Pam’s foods New Zealand isn’t a real person. The P A M and S come from the original owners’ initials.
posted by Bakedpotatoes on 7-1-2010 at 7:06 pm
Ha! The Weinermobile is in Savannah for a couple of days…. I guess I should go see it now….
posted by old hippy chick on 7-1-2010 at 8:52 pm
I was as irritated as Laura by the etymology of ‘bratwurst’.
As it appears you are absolutely right, but your spelling is slightly misleading. As Laura pointed out, ‘braten’ means ‘to fry’ or ‘to roast’ in German, which – to native speakers – intuitively implies the etymology, since a ‘bratwurst’ is usually fried or roasted.
But the tricky part is, that ‘brat-’ is derived from the German noun ‘Braet’ (conventionally ‘ae’ would be an umlaut, which might cause problems here, if you don’t have unicode). ‘Braet’ is exactly, what you described it to be: finely chopped meat.
To circumvent the irritation, I suggest, adjusting the spelling in the article to ‘Braet’. But it’s just a minor flaw in an otherwise great article, so who cares what I suggest.
posted by CHR on 7-1-2010 at 10:06 pm
Upon seeing this, I started wondering what the etymology of the word “barbecue” was. According to Wikipedia, nobody has a clue.
posted by Sillstaw on 7-2-2010 at 1:02 am
Mushroom ketchup is actually quite delicious. My girlfriend is a veggie and it makes a great substitute for Worcestershire sauce when making chilli and stews.
posted by Tom on 7-2-2010 at 6:22 am
@Tom, You are dating a veggie? What is she? A carrot? A tomato? :)
posted by Don on 7-2-2010 at 7:52 am
@stillslaw -
It probably has something to do with the Spanish word “barbacoa” which is basically roasted meat from beef cheek and head meat. Like many words in common American speech (lasso, buckaroo, taco bell), this one proabably originated with Mexican cowboys.
posted by AHI on 7-2-2010 at 8:22 am
Everyone knows the hamburger was invented in Seymour, Wisconsin. Where’s the love?
posted by Jim on 7-2-2010 at 9:02 am
In the South, a barbecue is NOT a cookout. A barbecue only happens when you are slow-cooking a pig (barbecue chicken is acceptable). Hamburgers are not barbecued.
posted by Erin on 7-2-2010 at 9:37 am
@ stillslaw and AHI
re: barbecue and barbecoa
I saw a thing a few yrs back on the History Channel that usually gets in the rotation around the 4th.
It traced the term BBQ to “barbecoa” as AHI says, but I think the term “barbecoa” was lifted from a native Caribbean language where the practice originated and it entered English thru Latin American colonies.
posted by Big Jonny on 7-2-2010 at 10:52 am
@Erin – Amen! But don’t forget beef brisket or beef ribs.
What Ethan is talking about here is correctly referred to as Grilling.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 7-2-2010 at 12:20 pm
Louis’ Lunch is a magical place!
posted by Lynnie on 7-2-2010 at 12:28 pm
Erin, I could not agree more. Barbecue is a cooking process where meats of any kind are slow roasted for hours well away from the heat source. Gives you plenty of time to down a few cold brews while the meat is cooking! Some wood smoke is also required. None of the items listed in the article has anything to do with barbecue. Cooked quickly over the heat source it’s called grilling.
posted by Steve S on 7-2-2010 at 2:15 pm
right on Steve … we in the US of A can confuse any issue – jusy use reterick …
posted by bob dev on 7-3-2010 at 3:35 pm
Those of us from Central North Carolina know, without a doubt, that “REAL” barbecue is found ONLY within a 20 mile circle around the absolute center of the topmost step of the Old Davidson County Courthouse in Lexington, NC.
Barbecue from anywhere else is just indifferently cooked meat, slathered with a thick, heavy, highly salted, overly sweet sauce used to hide the poor cooking skills of badly trained cooks.
Real Barbecue MUST come from Lexington, and NO WHERE ELSE!
posted by Cliff on 7-3-2010 at 6:46 pm
What about the spelling of ketchup that was ” catsup ” for a while ? And the Wienermobile was driven for a long time by none other than The Coroner of Munchkinland , Meinhardt Raabe aka “Little Oscar.”
posted by david B reynolds on 7-3-2010 at 10:48 pm
You people are so silly. Is barbecue the only thing you Southern Folks eat? Oh, by the way, when you experts on pig-roasting origination get through bragging about which back-hole southern pit is Meat Mecca you mght be interested in knowing less important things that are going on like the war in Afghanistan, the economy going down the tube, invasion glut by millions of Mexicans streaming acoss the border and changing the culture, and the end of civilization as we knew it.
posted by merreprankster on 7-4-2010 at 9:37 pm
@cliff – Real barbecue doesn’t require a lenghty bath in vinegar to tenderize the meat. A good dry rub, NOT sweet, sticky, or otherwise gloppy sauce, with 12 to 18 hours of low and slow heat…that’s barbecue. Live in NC now, but grew up in Memphis…don’t paint us all with the same brush.
posted by Lizzie on 7-6-2010 at 1:03 am
I can only assume merreprankster stole his/her name from someone more lighthearted… :)
Even as the world goes to Hell in a handbasket, we still gotta eat!
posted by Curmudgeon on 7-6-2010 at 8:57 am
I thought flat iron steak had been around for a long time. That it was called flat iron because they would stick an iron on top of it on the grill to speed the cooking process in diners and such. I’ve seen vintage sign promoting this. Maybe they stole the name for their “new” cut of meat.
posted by Rachel on 7-6-2010 at 4:31 pm