The Birthplace Of The Hamburger Is A Heated Debate

As the quintessential American dish, the hamburger has multiple claimants to the origin story. Even the 2016 recognition of Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut as the "Birthplace of the Hamburger Sandwich" by the Library of Congress hasn't stopped the debate, with ifs, ands, and buts by various claimants still trying to poke holes in the certification (and picking up some good publicity along the way). To be fair, they have a point. History always comes with haze, especially the further you go back and more evidence you consider. Plus, it's impossible to ascribe the basic idea of pressing ground meat together, cooking it over fire, and eating with bread to one, clear Kubrickian monolith moment.

While civilizations going back to the Romans cooked hamburger-like dishes of ground beef patties — not to mention the Hamburg Germans who brought the Hamburg steak to the United States — most agree the modern hamburger was birthed when someone got the idea to put it between two slices of bread. This took place somewhere between the late 19^th and 20^th century, when German immigrants began arriving in large numbers. It's who that person was and where and when it happened that ignites the debate, and the intense American passion for these beef patties that squirts kerosine on the coals.

As far back as 1884, Charlie Nagreen, aka "hamburger Charlie," got the idea to squash the meatballs he was selling at the Seymour, Wisconsin county fair between two pieces of bread to make a portable snack. Texas would disagree. In 2007, it adopted a resolution naming Fletcher Davis the hamburger's progenitor, citing the ground beef patties he sold in Athens, Texas in the late 1880s. About the same time in Bowden, Oklahoma, Oscar Weber Bilby began grilling ground Angus meat on yeast buns — a claim that earned the governor's backing in 1995. Hoosiers Frank and Charles Menches are candidates, too, when they ran out of pork sausage for the sandwiches they were selling at the 1885 Erie County Fair and replaced it with ground beef.

Louis' Lunch still gets the official crown, though, with the genesis supposedly coming when a hurried customer requested a fast meal, and owner Louis Lassen threw some ground steak trimmings between two sliced of bread. That's primarily because they can — and could — provide more evidence than other claims that were based in oral history. Plus, the restaurant is still operating and using the original broilers from 1895. None of this has quieted the debate, especially as new evidence continues to pop up. Ultimately, the simple truth may be that the hamburger is another case of simultaneous invention that we all benefit from, including in 15 burger recipes you'll be drooling over and can cook 15 different ways.