History Of The Hot Dog
Sausage is one of the oldest forms of encased meat, having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, composed around 700 B.C.
Frankfurt, Germany is traditionally credited with originating the frankfurter. It's said that the frankfurter was developed there in 1487, five years before Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world.
This claim is disputed by those who assert that the popular sausage – known as a "dachshund" or "little-dog" sausage – was created in the late 1600s by Johann Georghehner, a butcher living in Coburg, Germany. According to this report, Georghehner later traveled to Frankfurt to promote his new product.
However, the people of Vienna (Wien), Austria, point to the term "wiener" to prove their claim as the birthplace of the hot dog.
It is likely that the North American hot dog comes from a common European sausage brought here by butchers of several nationalities. Also in doubt is who first served the dachshund sausage with a roll. One report says a German immigrant sold them, along with milk rolls and sauerkraut, from a push cart in New York City's Bowery during the 1860's.
Since the sausage culture is German, it is likely that Germans introduced the practice of eating the dachshund sausages, which we today know as the hot dog, nestled in a bun.
In 1871, Charles Feltman, a German butcher, opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand.
In Chicago in 1893, the Colombian Exposition brought hordes of visitors who consumed large quantities of sausages sold by vendors. People liked this food that was easy to eat, convenient and inexpensive.
Also in 1893, sausages became the standard fare at baseball parks. This tradition is believed to have been started by a St. Louis bar owner, Chris Von de Ahe, a German immigrant who also owned the St. Louis Browns major league baseball team.
How the term "hot dog" came about is also in question. Some say the word was coined in 1901 at the New York Polo Grounds on a cold April day. Vendors were hawking hot dogs from portable hot water tanks shouting "They're red hot! Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot!" A New York Journal sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, observed the scene and hastily drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in rolls. Not sure how to spell "dachshund" he simply wrote "hot dog!" The cartoon is said to have been a sensation, thus coining the term "hot dog." However, historians have been unable to find this cartoon.
Into the early 1900s, with the rise of immigration and urbanization, these sausages in buns were becoming increasingly popular at public events – baseball games, boxing matches, fairs, carnivals and horse races. It made sense – they were cheap and easy to produce in mass quantities. They were already cooked, so they just needed to be re-heated. Fans and consumers liked them as well – hot dogs were an inexpensive, warm, hand-held food and that tasted great. Same holds true today.
Source: National Hot Dog & Sausage Council www.hot-dog.org
