It is spring and across America baseball parks are back in business for another season and through the stands and in the concourses, fans are treated to the aroma of grilled hot dogs wafting in the air. Unlike today’s overwhelming food choices presented at a ball game, there was a time when ballpark fare was limited to hot dogs, beer, coke, popcorn, crackerjacks, and a nondescript ice cream bar. However then as now the simple yet noble hotdog has ranked near the top in popularity.
Also, in towns and cities across our nation colorful carts designed to dispense hot dogs on fresh rolls with all the condiments on street corners and downtown sidewalks are being made ready to roll out for another season.
This week I want to tell the story of this simple sausage that many consider a quintessential part of American cuisine, the hot dog sometimes spelled as hotdog and depending on location variously called a frankfurter, frank, weenie, wiener, or red hot.
While many think of the hot dog as American the first reference to the grandfather of the hot dog, the sausage is found in Homer’s Odyssey in this line from that tale: “as when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted…” Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there was no reference as to how they ate the thing or if there were any condiments involved. Perhaps they ate it rolled in a piece of unleavened bread topped with a few chopped wild onions.
Credit for the first sausage is sometimes given to Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar’s cook named Gaius. Roman chefs starved their pigs for one week before butchering them and then cooking and eating them as a way to clean the pig’s digestive system out. The story goes that at one feast Gaius noticed that one of the pigs had not been properly cleaned out, so he sliced the pig’s belly open to see if it was fit to eat and low and behold saw that the intestines were puffed up and hollow, and in that moment the sausage casing was born. Gaius stuffed these with ground venison and beef mixed with ground wheat and spices. These he tied into sections creating the first “wiener.”
Legend has it that the frankfurter was developed in Frankfurt Germany in 1487 and another legend has it that a popular sausage resembling a dachshund, or the “little dog” was created by a Coburg German butcher in the late 17th Century. Other cities in Germany and Austria also claimed credit as the birthplace of the hot dog but it was in 1852 that a true milestone was reached when the butcher’s guild of Frankfurt introduced a curved, spiced, and smoked sausage in a thin casing, they called the frankfurter. It was this sausage that would become the hot dog on American shores.
There is some dispute and many stories concerning who introduced the serving of hot dogs on a roll in the U.S. Over the years a variety of methods for serving the hotdog had been tried including forks, white gloves and waxed paper. none of which were satisfactory. In 1867 Charles Feltman, a German baker opened the first Coney Island hot dog stand where he sold workmen a hot lunch consisting of frankfurter on one of his buns.
In 1915 a Jewish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker from Poland went to work for Feltman and by the end of that year had saved enough to open up his own Coney Island stand in 1916 under the name Nathan’s Famous Inc. selling his hotdogs for 5 cents each. Today the company claims to be the world’s greatest hot dog purveyor.
Who introduced hot dogs in ballparks, like much of the hotdog story is clouded in mystery. Some historians credit St. Louis’ colorful Chris Von der Ahe who owned both a bar and the St. Louis Browns baseball team of the American League but to this day no concrete evidence has been found to support that claim.
Harry M. Stevens, whose company ran the concessions at the Polo Grounds in New York was credited with introducing hot dogs at the ballpark on a cold April day in 1902 but Harry later told an interviewer that “I have been given credit for introducing the hot dog to America. Well, I don’t deserve it. In fact, at first, I couldn’t see the idea. It was my son, Frank who first got the idea and wanted to try it on one of the early six-day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden…”
Anyway, whoever came up with the idea of selling hot dogs at the ballpark came up with a good idea that has stood the test of time.
Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com
Not always relishing history of hot dogs
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It is spring and across America baseball parks are back in business for another season and through the stands and in the concourses, fans are treated to the aroma of grilled hot dogs wafting in the air. Unlike today’s overwhelming food choices presented at a ball game, there was a time when ballpark fare was limited to hot dogs, beer, coke, popcorn, crackerjacks, and a nondescript ice cream bar. However then as now the simple yet noble hotdog has ranked near the top in popularity.
Also, in towns and cities across our nation colorful carts designed to dispense hot dogs on fresh rolls with all the condiments on street corners and downtown sidewalks are being made ready to roll out for another season.
This week I want to tell the story of this simple sausage that many consider a quintessential part of American cuisine, the hot dog sometimes spelled as hotdog and depending on location variously called a frankfurter, frank, weenie, wiener, or red hot.
While many think of the hot dog as American the first reference to the grandfather of the hot dog, the sausage is found in Homer’s Odyssey in this line from that tale: “as when a man besides a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted…” Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there was no reference as to how they ate the thing or if there were any condiments involved. Perhaps they ate it rolled in a piece of unleavened bread topped with a few chopped wild onions.
Credit for the first sausage is sometimes given to Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar’s cook named Gaius. Roman chefs starved their pigs for one week before butchering them and then cooking and eating them as a way to clean the pig’s digestive system out. The story goes that at one feast Gaius noticed that one of the pigs had not been properly cleaned out, so he sliced the pig’s belly open to see if it was fit to eat and low and behold saw that the intestines were puffed up and hollow, and in that moment the sausage casing was born. Gaius stuffed these with ground venison and beef mixed with ground wheat and spices. These he tied into sections creating the first “wiener.”
Legend has it that the frankfurter was developed in Frankfurt Germany in 1487 and another legend has it that a popular sausage resembling a dachshund, or the “little dog” was created by a Coburg German butcher in the late 17th Century. Other cities in Germany and Austria also claimed credit as the birthplace of the hot dog but it was in 1852 that a true milestone was reached when the butcher’s guild of Frankfurt introduced a curved, spiced, and smoked sausage in a thin casing, they called the frankfurter. It was this sausage that would become the hot dog on American shores.
There is some dispute and many stories concerning who introduced the serving of hot dogs on a roll in the U.S. Over the years a variety of methods for serving the hotdog had been tried including forks, white gloves and waxed paper. none of which were satisfactory. In 1867 Charles Feltman, a German baker opened the first Coney Island hot dog stand where he sold workmen a hot lunch consisting of frankfurter on one of his buns.
In 1915 a Jewish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker from Poland went to work for Feltman and by the end of that year had saved enough to open up his own Coney Island stand in 1916 under the name Nathan’s Famous Inc. selling his hotdogs for 5 cents each. Today the company claims to be the world’s greatest hot dog purveyor.
Who introduced hot dogs in ballparks, like much of the hotdog story is clouded in mystery. Some historians credit St. Louis’ colorful Chris Von der Ahe who owned both a bar and the St. Louis Browns baseball team of the American League but to this day no concrete evidence has been found to support that claim.
Harry M. Stevens, whose company ran the concessions at the Polo Grounds in New York was credited with introducing hot dogs at the ballpark on a cold April day in 1902 but Harry later told an interviewer that “I have been given credit for introducing the hot dog to America. Well, I don’t deserve it. In fact, at first, I couldn’t see the idea. It was my son, Frank who first got the idea and wanted to try it on one of the early six-day bicycle races at Madison Square Garden…”
Anyway, whoever came up with the idea of selling hot dogs at the ballpark came up with a good idea that has stood the test of time.
Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com
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