Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Ah, the hamburger. The anchor of the classic American restaurant menu and the staple of backyard barbeques. With the burger so solidly entrenched in American culture, it's surprising that so little is known about its origin.

Some say that what would later become fried ground beef served on a bun was originally poor quality spiced and shredded meat cooked or eaten raw by lower-class Germans. In the northern city of Hamburg, the dish became known as Hamburg steak, and, imported stateside, ultimately became the familiar American hamburger. No one knows when or where the bun was added to the concoction.

Another story has the town of Hamburg, New York as the birthplace of the burger. It's said to be the invention of brothers Frank and Charles Menches, food vendors at the 1885 Erie County fair. When they ran out of pork for their sandwiches one day, the Menches brothers improvised with ground, cooked beef. If the tale is true, the sandwich was named after an American Hamburg.

By about 1910, the word hamburger and the sandwich it represents were familiar to many Americans. Around 1935, diners began serving hamburgers topped with cheese, inspiring the novel moniker cheeseburger. By the close of the 1930s, Americans, comfortable with this ground beef fare, clipped the name of the dish to simply burger.

Radio Script > Hamburger