The History of the Hotdog in America

The things we writers choose to learn about. I don't even eat hotdogs, well, not often anyway. Yet I found all this great information while writing a piece on hotdogs for the 4^th of July and so, what else could I do but write a silly, fun and hopefully informative article on hotdogs. After all, July is National Hotdog Month.

I know there are many hotdog afficienados in the world and I have to admit that my dislike for hotdogs grows from my awareness of how truly unhealthy they are as a food choice. Nitrites have been proven to increase your chance of cancer if eaten on a regular basis. A newly released report that studied red meat and processed meat consumption in a half a million AARP seniors, over a ten year period, found that those who ate processed hotdogs and other processed meats like bacon, sausage and deli meats had a 20 percent higher chance of having heart disease, cancer or diabetes than those who limited themselves to one serving or less per month.

It seems to be that this survey is saying with commonsense, if you eat a hotdog once a month, you're fine; but if you eat them once a week, you might want to cut back! Like so much else related to nutrition and health, common sense should prevail.

History of the Hotdog

At What's Cooking America, you can read about the first known mention of a string of sausages, (hotdogs), in the works of Stephen C. Carlson, a Bible Scholar who writes in his Sketches in Biblical Studies website about a man named Symeon the Fool, who is described by Leontius of Neapolis, a writer in the 7th Century, in his book, The Life and Miracles of Symeon the Fool.

"But he behaved otherwise before the crowd. For sometimes when Sunday came, he took a string of sausages and wore them as a (deacon's) stole. In his left hand he held a pot of mustard, and he dipped (the sausages in the mustard) and ate them from morning on. And he smeared mustard on the mouths of some of those who came to joke with him. Wherefore also a certain rustic, who had leucoma in his two eyes, came to make fun of him. Symeon anointed his eyes with mustard. The man was nearly burned to death, and Symeon said to him, "Go wash, idiot, with vinegar and garlic, and you will be healed immediately." As it seemed a better thing to do, he ran immediately to a doctor instead and was completely blinded. Finally, in a mad rage he swore in Syriac, "By the God of Heaven, even if my two eyes should suddenly leap (from their sockets), I will do whatever the Fool told me." And he washed himself as Symeon told him. Immediately his eyes were healed, clear as when he was born, so that he honored God. Then the Fool came upon him and said to him, "Behold, you are healed, idiot! Never again steal your neighbor's goats. "

Well,,,that's interesting isn't it? What am I to take from this great piece of 7^th century religious lore? I should believe that a man, who dipped sausages (hotdogs), that were hanging around his neck, into mustard and smeared it on some guys blind eyes, healed him? That hotdogs are ordained by God? All, I know for sure, is that in the 7^th century, someone was making hotdogs!

Fast forward 800 years to Frankfurt, Germany and we find the first frankfurter. In 1986, the city celebrated the 500 year anniversary of the hot dog, or "franks". Is this a settled fact or did hotdogs begin somewhere else?

Another popular German legend said that in the late 1600's, Johann Georghelner, a butcher, create a popular sausage called dachshund or "little dog" and that he traveled to Frankfurt to sell his product amongst the Frankfurter lovers there.

The people of Vienna, Austria say that the term "wiener" came from a master sausage maker who got his training in Frankfurt, but called his particular type of sausage, the "wiener-frankfurter" and that it gradually became know as "wienerwurst" and later shorted to just "weiner" (The German name for Vienna)

While all that ancient history of wieners, frankfurters and dachsunds is fascinating, (it is, isn't it?), we can safely say that until German immigrants bought their own brands of sausages to America, the American hot dog did not exist.

All of us can agree that when we hear Coney Island, we think Coney Dogs! Sure, there's the boardwalk, but they pale in comparison to the fame of the Coney Dog. And we can thank Charles Feltman who opened the first Coney Island hot dog stand in Brooklyn, in 1867.

According to Jeffrey Stanton, who wrote in Coney Island: Food & Dining, that Mr. Feltman owned a pie wagon that would deliver his fresh baked pies to the inns and beer saloons that lined the beaches of Coney Island. But his clients wanted some hot sandwiches to serve to their customers and he arrived at making simple hot sausage in a soft roll.

It was a hit, and he sold 3,684 sausages in a roll during that first year in business and opened a sit down restaurant, called Feltman's, with the proceeds. From a hot dog stand to a million dollar empire at his death in 1910.

But it was another German peddler, Antonoine Feuchtwanger, who invented a split bun that were long and just the same length as Mr. Feuchtwanger's sausage or wieners. He called the sandwiches red hots and sold them in St. Louise.

We could thank Yale University for the term hot dog. The popularity of these sausages in a bun had spread to the east coast and were a popular lunch cart item outside of student dorms at major eastern universities. Yale students began to call these wagons, "dog carts", making fun of the source and quality of the meat encased in the sausages. Their was a belief that possibly dog meat was used in making the sausages.
In 1895, the Yale Record included a poem about one of these lunch wagons, "The Kennel Club"

Echoes from the Lunch Wagon

"'Tis dogs' delight to bark and bite,"
Thus does the adage run.
But I delight to bite the dog
When placed inside a bun.

However, while Yale students may have invented the term, it was a sports cartoonist, T.A. "Tad" Dorgan, who popularized it in print media and newspapers, making fun of German figures as dachshund dogs just after the turn of the century. He drew talking sausage cartoons making fun of the cheap weiners sold at Coney Island, again suggesting that they might have dogmeat in them.

Peggy Towbridge Filippiona writes at Homecooking.com that in 1913, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce even went so far as to ban the use of the term, "hot dog" from signs at Coney Island. Their banning of the term came a bit late, as it had already appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1900.

Hallejuh, we've done it. We've discovered the origin and name of the infamous Hot Dog that still graces our American tables and bonfires. While they appear to be waning in popularity as a lunch food these days, they still maintain the lead in cookout fares choices.

But my favorite story that I discovered while "studying" hot dogs this week, is about the time that Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to serve hot dogs to the King and Queen of England, at a picnic on their estate in Hyde Park on June 11, 1939

From What's Cooking America's website here is the menu of that infamous meal.

Virginia Ham
Hot Dogs (if weather permits)
Smoked Turkey
Cranberry Jelly
Green Salad
Rolls
Strawberry Shortcake
Coffee, Beer, Soft Drinks

Sounds very American, doesn't it! Enjoy a hot dog today, but remember, not too many, one a month is recommended!

Resources Used

Nutrition Magazine, June Issue
HomeCooking
What's Cookinig in America
National Hotdog Month