In the hands of the next generation of Jewish immigrants, for instance, a Frankfurter in New York becomes an all-beef product due to obvious dietary restrictions.īut even as Oscar Meyer entered pop culture with their jingles in the 1950s, the hot dog never really became chain food despite several attempts.

As the words changed, the meaning and product followed suit. 'If you look at the USDA website and look up hot dogs, it will tell you that the words wiener, frankfurter, hot dogs, and bologna are interchangeable,' even though, initially, Frankfurters were mostly composed of pork, while wieners were made of a pork and beef mixture. The sausages brought over from Germany weren't initially called hot dogs, but instead were designated by their regional names like Weisswurst and Frankfurter- distinctions which gradually disappeared. 'Charles Dickens described them as 'gobble, gulp, and go.'' 'We have a lot of commentary from European visitors who were revolted by our eating habits,' says Kraig. Americans' preference for meat, speed, and convenience made it an easy fit. Butcher shops were established, breeding a sausage culture that took off due to the abundance of street vendors. What we do know is that hot dogs came to America through the massive wave of German immigration in the mid-19th century. Stevens, a caterer who popularized the food at sports venues like the Polo Grounds, did not actually inspire a sports cartoonist to invent the name. ' The myth you read online about hot dogs getting its name from baseball games isn't true,' says Kraig. It's unlikely that Kraig's assertion would sway the opinion of the millions of others who've turned this argument into semantic sport, but when discussing the hot dog, much of its history is up for debate anyway. ' It's something stuffed in bread it's walking around food. The early hot dog vendors used to call them hot dog sandwiches.'

It's a stupid argument,' says professor Bruce Kraig, a noted hot dog historian. If we're talking about hot dogs, we might as well start with a #hottake: 'A hot dog is a sandwich.

Snappy red hotdogs