Few foods say summer in America like a hot dog. Ballgames, picnics, the Fourth of July: the humble frank shows up everywhere. Americans eat about 20 billion of them a year. But how did a German sausage in a bun become such a national icon?
The short answer is that hot dog sausages came from Germany and Austria, arrived with immigrants, and became a cheap working-class street food in the United States. Nobody knows for sure who first put the sausage in a bun, but there are several colorful stories. By the 20th century, hot dogs were tied to baseball and American culture.
A Sausage With a Hometown
The word frankfurter comes from Frankfurt, Germany, where similar pork sausages have been known since the 13th century. They were even handed out to the public during imperial coronations.
The word wiener points to Vienna, Austria, home to a sausage made from pork and beef. A butcher named Johann Georg Lahner is said to have brought the Frankfurt sausage to Vienna, where he added beef to the mix. That's led to a funny twist: in most German-speaking countries these sausages are called Wiener, but in Austria, people call them Frankfurter.
Who Put It in a Bun?
This is where legends take over. One story credits a German immigrant named Feuchtwanger from Frankfurt. According to one version, he sold hot sausages on the streets of St. Louis around 1880 and gave customers gloves so they wouldn't burn their fingers. Too many customers walked away with the gloves, so his wife suggested serving the sausages in a roll instead.
Other versions place him at a World's Fair, either in Chicago in 1893 or St. Louis in 1904, with fairgoers keeping the gloves as souvenirs. There are many versions, and none is proven.
Another contender is Charles Feltman, a pieman at Coney Island in New York. In 1867, he had a cart built with a stove to boil sausages and a compartment to keep the buns fresh. His business grew into a big restaurant, famous for its "Coney Island Red Hots."
Why Is It Called a Hot Dog?
People have used "dog" as slang for sausage since the 1800s. The term may have come from old jokes and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat.
There's a popular legend that a newspaper cartoonist named Tad Dorgan coined "hot dog" around 1900. That can't be right. The term shows up in print in 1884, and it was used for a sausage in a roll by 1892. Dorgan's earliest known use of the phrase came in 1906.
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Since the 1920s, hot dogs have carried special cultural and patriotic weight in America through their link with public events and sports. Vendors roam stadium aisles, and some ballparks have signature dogs, like the Dodger Dog in Los Angeles and the Fenway Frank in Boston.
Regional styles add to the fun, and the names can be confusing. Michigan hot dogs are popular in upstate New York, while Coney Island hot dogs are popular in Michigan.
And then there's the great debate: is a hot dog a sandwich? Merriam-Webster says yes. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council said no in 2015. Whatever you call it, it still tastes best with a cold drink and a game on.
