There is a higher chance than normal today that you will eat a hot dog.
I won’t tell you too much about how they’re made—that seems like a willful attack on the hot dog industry—but I will tell you about their history. Because I read about it this morning on Wikipedia.
It isn’t a long history—an exploration of how the hot dog came to be, rather than notations of moments in which the hot dog made a splash. We’re going with a timeline format. Also, please note that some of this isn’t entirely historically verified, but it’s the best Wikipedia can offer and that’s good enough for me.
1200’s: The Frankfurter Würtschen, a pork sausage similar to the wiener of a hot dog, is created in Frankfurt, Germany.
November 30, 1562: Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor is coronated King of Germany, an event marked by the distribution of Frankfurter Würtschen’s to the people.
Circa 1800: Johann Georg Lahner, a German butcher, came to Vienna, Austria, bringing with him the Frankfurter Würtschen, to which he added beef and retitled simply as the Frankfurter. Today, in the German-speaking world excluding Austria, the sausages in hot dogs are called Wieners (in honor of Wien, the German spelling of Vienna) if they have some beef, and Frankfurters if they’re only made of pork.
*Now remember, at this point only the sausage is being served—no bun, and therefore not yet a hot dog. Listen closely, Americans.*
1869: Charles Feltman, a German immigrant to America (who’d started selling food out of a pushcart on the beach two summers prior) invents the modern hot dog, putting a frankfurter into a specially-made roll (now known as a hot dog bun), making it a finger food for beachgoers. He calls the food the Coney Island Red Hot.
1880, 1893, or 1904: Another German immigrant—named something like Antoine Feuchtwanger—starts putting frankfurters or wieners into rolls because he, too, is trying to serve them as a finger food, and he’s losing money on the white gloves he’s giving customers. This either happened in St. Louis or Chicago (you’ll note 1893 was the year of the Chicago World’s Fair, and in 1904 St. Louis celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase), which is why it’s thought to have brought the hot dog to the Midwest, possibly independently of the happenings out on Coney Island.
1916: By now, the food is being known as the hot dog (reflecting the uncertainty over what meat is in the product, though you need not worry about eating dog today when you enjoy a hot dog). Nathan Handwerker, a Polish immigrant who’d worked at Feltman’s hot dog establishment, started his own competing hot dog stand, which would go on to be called Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, now a chain operating in 18 countries and sponsoring the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest every Fourth of July.
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Wikipedia articles used:
Hot dog
Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles Feltman
Nathan Handwerker
Nathan’s Famous
