first recorded use of the term “Hamburg Steak” didn’t happen until the 1880s. In 1887, the Chicago Tribune mentioned that Hamburg Steak was “made by chopping any lean piece of beef and cooking it with onions or garlic.” The first time the word “Hamburger” made an appearance was in the Walla Walla Union, a newspaper in the state of Washington, in an article on January 5, 1889.
I thought you might get a kick out of some of the quotes I found with the word hamburger in them.
Hamburgers in the News
| 1893 | “Fraker’s celebrated Hamburger steak sandwiches are always on hand to replenish an empty stomach and even fortify Satan himself.”—Evening Gazette (Reno, Nevada) |
| 1895 | “Mike’s face looked like a Hamburger sandwich.”—Washington Times (Washington, District of Columbia) |
| 1896 | “A distinguished favorite, only five cents, is Hamburger steak sandwich, the meat for which is kept ready in small patties and cooked while you wait on the gasoline range.”—Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) |
| 1897 | “He was very drunk and knocked a hamburger sandwich out of her hand.”—St. Louis-Post Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri) |
| 1905 | “Try a hamburger steak sandwich at Worsham & Zook’s”—Chariton Courier (Keytesville, Missouri) |
| 1906 | “Harris was cooking a hamburger steak sandwich for a hungry car conductor who had come in from a run and was deftly flopping the steak on its other side, when leakage from the gasoline stove tank became ignited and exploded.”—Buffalo Courier (Buffalo, New York) |
| 1907 | “Don’t forget that we are the people that can satisfy your hunger with an Oyster Stew, or a Bowl of Chile, or a good old Hamburger Sandwich. We also have one of the choicest lines of fine cigars in town”—LA Reinecke, The Owl Cafe; in The Louisburg Herald (Louisburg, Kansas) |
| 1909 | “Fort Scott People Are Turning into Hamburg Sandwich Fiends”—Headline, Fort Scott Tribune-Monitor (Fort Scott, Kansas) |
| 1910 | “D.H. Culmer is recovering from a severe attack of ptomaine poisoning. He ate a hamburger steak sandwich at a restaurant and was soon taken with convulsions, suffering extremely. Several men were required to hold him. A physician worked with him for four hours, after which he was removed to his home from the grocery store of C.E. Payne, where he is employed”—Evening Times-Republican (Marshalltown, Iowa) |
| 1911 | “S.R. Maxson Has the ONLY place to get a nice cup of coffee or hot hamburger sandwich.”—The Argos Reflector (Argos, Indiana) |
| 1911 | “Perhaps the oddest bit of evidence ever filed in a Court of Justice was a hamburger sandwich, turned over today to Prosecutor Burns from the Justice’s Court of Harry Hughes, in the case of the State of Ohio against Tom Buzanik, recently fined thirty-five dollars for the alleged mixing of salt of sulphur in this hamburger meat, in order to give it a rich appearance. Buzanik appealed the case. The hamburger sandwich is now several weeks old, and its odor is strengthening with age.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) |
| 1918 | “Hot Hamburger Steak Sandwich with Brown Gravy from Statler’s Lunch—twenty cents”—The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, New York) |
| 1919 | “Hamburger Steak Sandwich from Kresge’s five and ten Store—five cents”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis Missouri) |
Did You Know?
In 1918, “Liberty Steak” would become a common replacement for the word hamburger steak. Americans were getting out of World War I, and with patriotism on a high, the use of a German word was not going to fly. Later on, during World War II at the 1941 National Association of Retail Meat Merchants, butchers agreed to change the name of hamburgers to “defense steak.” Much like liberty steak before it, defense steak was in use for a few years before it disappeared altogether.
Who Made the First Hamburger?
There are many claims to the creation of the first hamburger. Here are four that I believe are the best of the bunch.
Hamburger Charlie
In 1885, Charles “Hamburger Charlie” Nagreen traveled to Seymour, Wisconsin, in his ox-driven cart with 1,500 feet of lumber inside to build a meatball stand at the Outagamie County Fair. He was only fifteen years old at the time. He realized the attendees weren’t going to be able to walk around, enjoy the exhibits, and eat a meatball all at the same time, making his original idea a bust. So Nagreen smashed a meatball and sandwiched it between two pieces of bread. This was a success, and he returned to sell hamburgers at this fair every year. He passed away on June 5, 1951.
On August 6, 2005, a fourteen-foot tall statue of Hamburger Charlie was unveiled at the seventeenth annual Burger Fest in Seymour. There is a plaque with “Charlie’s Chant” located at the base of the statue:
“Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger hot, with an onion in the middle and a pickle on top, makes your lips go flippity-flop, come on over, try an order, fried in butter, listen to it sputter.”
A few years later, the Wisconsin Legislature proclaimed Charles Nagreen as the inventor of the hamburger and Seymour as the “Home of the Hamburger.”
The Menches Family
Frank and Charles Menches were traveling concessionaires in 1885–1892. They customarily sold ground sausage sandwiches but were running low on product. After a trip to the butcher showed they only had ground beef available, they changed the protein in their sandwich. It tasted bland, so they added brown sugar, coffee, and a few other ingredients to liven it up.
In an October 4, 1951, obituary in the Akron Beacon Journal titled, “Frank Menches Dies, Invented Hamburger,” it states that this all happened on the opening day of the Summit County Fair in 1892. The article also mentions that two years later at the Elyria Fair, Frank named it the hamburger.
But the Menches family maintains that this all took place in 1885 at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York. They said that when someone asked what the sandwich was called, Frank looked up and saw the banner for the festival and said, “This is the hamburger.” In this version, the name for the sandwich is derived from the city in which it was first served, not Hamburg, Germany.
In 1991, the great-grandchildren of Charles Menches discovered a copy of the original recipe. They followed the path set forth by their burger ancestors by selling the hamburgers at fairs, and this eventually led to the opening of the first Menches Brother restaurant in Green, Ohio, on March 7, 1994. It has since closed. Currently, the family owns restaurants in Canton, Massillon, and Uniontown, Ohio.
The brothers also lay claim to inventing the ice cream cone at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
Louis’ Lunch
Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, claims that Louis Lassen is not only responsible for the hamburger, but the steak sandwich, too.
What we do know is that in 1900, Louis took some of the leftover trimmings used for his steak sandwich, ground them up, and placed them between two slices of toast. He served this hamburger sandwich from his lunch cart to a customer who was on the go. Years later, the legendary meat wagon was retired when he moved into a space with indoor seating.
In July 2000, the Library of Congress acknowledged Louis Lassen as the creator of the hamburger and Louis’ Lunch as the location where the first hamburger was served. The first steak sandwich was also acknowledged as a Louis’ Lunch first.
The documentation submitted to the Library of Congress
