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The hamburger is one of the most popular meals around, and it has been for some time. With billions of the being served each year at locations ranging from the cheapest fast food joints to the most expensive gourmet establishments anywhere. Of course, they are also grilled up by millions of people in their own homes.
It is so popular that people often don’t give it a second thought when ordering it, but if you really stop to ponder, you might wonder how it got the name. Hamburgers, after all, do not contain ham, or any pork for that matter (most of the time).
Instead, hamburgers are made with beef unless otherwise noted, as in a ‘turkey burger’ or a ‘tofu burger’, or something else.
Well, as with many things in languages, the way the name developed is at least somewhat of a mystery. In general, however, the story almost certainly goes like this.
In the 1800s, millions of people migrated from Europe to America, with a great many of them coming over via ships on the Hamburg America Line. This was a transatlantic shipping company that first got started in 1847, linking Europe with multiple different ports on the East Coast of the United States.
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The beginning of these journeys was the Port of Hamburg in Germany. As is always the case when people migrate, they brought with them their own unique cultures and traditions, including the foods that they like to eat.
People in the region around the Port of Hamburg were known for many things, one of them being high-quality beef. In a 2011 book by Andrew F. Smith, it is written:
“Real Hamburg beef was an expensive gourmet food in the nineteenth century… One common way to prepare fresh Hamburg was to chop it, season it, and form it into patties.”
You can see where this is going. Putting those patties between bread is a natural extension of this. Putting meats (and other ingredients) between bread was already a popular culinary trend in many places in Europe and America.
The term Hamburger was commonly used to describe someone who came from Hamburg, Germany, at the time. Exactly where the term also began being used to describe the popular dish that they often enjoyed is unclear.
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A dish called ‘Hamburg steaks’ was seen in books as early as the 1880s, which means it was used by people talking about it earlier than that. In the early years of the 20th century, the term Hamburger was seen in print.
Whenever and wherever the term was first used to describe the iconic sandwich, it clearly caught on and changed culinary vocabulary forever.
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