It’s one of the world’s most famous and beloved fast foods. Most commonly served with ketchup and mustard and sometimes with onions and mayonnaise, this sausage in a bun is known in almost every part of the world today.
The methods of cooking it vary from extremely simple recipes (like steaming or grilling the meat, placing it inside the bread and serving it as it is or covered with different sauces) to incredibly complex and complicated ways of preparing and serving it (especially indented for those who considered themselves too important to eat the same food as the lower class).
The name of this dish is still an enigma for many because every culture and nation seems to have a different version of the story.
Some of them involve the accusations and suspicions that the meat used for preparation came from dogs (which was not uncommon in Germany – so this may be the source of these rumours) and others refer to an episode in which Thomas Dorgan, an American cartoonist, used this term by mistake because he could not spell the German name of the sausage when he heard the vendors using it.
And it does not even matter who used it for the first time; all that matters is that today it is an international term used and understood by everyone.
When we talk about hot dog as we know it today, we are all aware that the place of origin is somewhere in the United States of America.
But, if we wanted to research deeper, we would observe that, in fact, the history is much older and that it dates back to the 15th century Europe – where the sausage, that is now the most common hot dog ingredient, was first prepared and promoted.
Thus, the earliest history is connected to the “dachshund” and the “frankfurter”, common sausages that send us back to various regions of today’s Germany.
For example, in 1987, Frankfurt celebrated 500 years of hot dog history, so it is obvious that they take pride as well in the invention of this product.
But who is the one who first thought of combining the sausage with the bread bun and serve it like that? Well, you will be disappointed again, because the precise person is not known since there were many hot dog producers who claimed to have invented this method of preparing it.
However, one story seems to be more widely accepted: with the Bavarian Anton Feuchtwanger who wanted to sell hot sausages during the St. Louis “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” from 1904.
The story goes that, in order to protect his customers from getting their hands burned by the hot sausage he came up with idea of giving them gloves.
Because this idea did not function as planned, he was helped by a nearby baker to produce the hot dog bun – a long enough bread roll that would hold the sausage.
Throughout the 20th century, the hot dog increased in popularity and people all across the globe, irrespective of their ethnicity, age and social backgrounds relish it today.
The legendary Humphrey Bogart (of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon fame) famously said, “a hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz”.
What’s your favourite type of Hot Dog?
Licious has got your dogged desire for hot dogs covered, by stocking up with the best range of sausages in town. So go on, hog the dog!