History of the hamburger

The Hamburger most likely first appeared in the 19th or early 20th century. The modern hamburger was a product of the culinary needs of a society rapidly changing due to industrialization, the emergence of the working class and middle class and the demand for mass-produced, affordable food that could be consumed outside of the home.

Americans contend they were the first to combine two slices of bread and a steak of ground beef into a "hamburger sandwich" and sell it. Part of the controversy over the origin of the hamburger is because the two basic ingredients, bread and beef, were prepared and consumed separately for many years before their combination. Shortly after its creation, the hamburger was prepared with all of the now typically characteristic trimmings, including onions, lettuce, and sliced pickles.

After various controversies in the 20th century, including a nutritional controversy in the late 1990s, the burger is now readily identified with the United States, and a particular style of cuisine, namely fast food. Along with fried chicken and apple pie, the hamburger has become a culinary icon in the United States.

The hamburger's international popularity demonstrates the larger globalization of food that also includes the rise in global popularity of other national dishes, including the Italian pizza, and Japanese sushi. The hamburger has spread from continent to continent perhaps because it matches familiar elements in different culinary cultures. This global culinary culture has been produced, in part, by the concept of selling processed food, first launched in the 1920s by the White Castle restaurant chain and its visionary Edgar Waldo "Billy" Ingram and then refined by McDonald's in the 1940s. This global expansion provides economic points of comparison like the Big Mac Index, by which one can compare the purchasing power of different countries where the Big Mac hamburger is sold.

Prior to the disputed invention of the hamburger in the United States, similar foods already existed in the culinary tradition of Europe. The Apicius cookbook, a collection of ancient Roman recipes that may date to the early 4th century, details a preparation of beef called isicia omentata; served as a baked patty in which beef is mixed with pine kernels, black and green peppercorns, and white wine, isicia omentata may be the earliest precursor to the hamburger. In the 12th century, the nomadic Mongols carried food made of several varieties of milk (kumis) and meat (horse or camel). During the life of their leader Genghis Khan (1167–1227), the Mongol army occupied the western portions of the modern-day nations of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, forming the so-called Golden Horde. This cavalry dominated army was fast moving and sometimes unable to stop for a meal, so they often ate while riding. They wrapped a few slices of meat under their saddles so it would crumble under pressure and motion and be cooked by heat and friction. This recipe for minced meat spread throughout the Mongol Empire until its split in the 1240s. It was common for Mongol armies to follow different groups of animals (such as herds of horses or oxen or flocks of sheep) that provided the necessary protein for the warriors' diets.Marco Polo also recorded descriptions of the culinary customs of the Mongol warriors, indicating that the flesh of a single pony could provide one day's sustenance for 100 warriors.

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Wikipedia