What do summer cookouts, baseball games, and the 4th of July all have in common? Hot dogs! Americans consume around 7 billion hot dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day alone. But where did this iconic American food come from and how did it get its name?
Hot dogs are a type of sausage. The meat is ground finer and seasoned more mildly than many other sausages. This particular sausage is generally considered to have originated in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1487, giving it the name many of us still recognize of frankfurter. In 1987, the town celebrated the 500th birthday of the sausage. There are at least two other towns that dispute this origin story. Vienna, Austria, also claims the birthplace of the hot dog, pointing to another familiar name, wiener. (Vienna in German is Wein.) Another story suggests that it was Johann Georghehner from Coburg, Germany, who invented the sausage in the 1690s and then traveled to Frankfurt to sell them. He called them dachshund sausages.
Wherever invented, it is certain the sausages were brought to the United States by German immigrants. Sausage vending proved to be an accessible business for many immigrants. Sausage carts were so common in cities by September 1894, the Duluth News Tribune reported about Chicago, “More numerous than the lunch wagon is the strolling salesman of ‘red hots.’ This individual clothed in ragged trousers, a white coat and cook’s cap, and unlimited cheek, obstructs the night prowler at every corner. He carries a tank in which are swimming and sizzling hundreds of Frankforters or Wieners.”
How these “red hots” came to be called hot dogs as opposed to frankfurter or wieners is so controversial that three men wrote a 293-page book on the subject titled Origin of the term “hot dog.” They attribute the name to college students, particularly from Yale, who referred to the carts as “dog wagons” as a crude joke suggesting that the sausages contained dog meat. One of these wagons was even named “The Kennel Club.” The college slang caught on. While many foods tend to wane in popularity, hot dogs are still a popular, iconic, affordable, American food well over 100 years later. I know my children are happy they are still popular and are eagerly looking forward to eating their share of the 7 billion summer hot dogs this year.
Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy or to stump your in-laws.
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