(1) Two
or more slices of bread or the like with a layer of meat, fish, cheese, etc
between each pair.
(2) To
insert something between two other things.
(3) A
type of engineering or construction where flat materials are joined in layers.
1762.Named after John Montagu (1718-1792), Fourth
Earl Sandwich, a bit of a gambler who, during marathon sessions at the tables,
would eat slices of cold meat between bread rather than rise for a meal.However, the earl’s biographer suggested his
subject was a serious chap, committed to the navy, politics and the arts and
the sandwiches were actually eaten at his desk at the Admiralty but the legend
is much preferred.It was in his honor Captain James
Cook (1728-1779) named the Hawaiian Sandwich islands in 1778 when Montagu was First Lord of
the Admiralty.The family name is from
the place in Kent which in the Old English was Sandwicæ
(sandy harbor; trading center).
There is doubt whether the sandwich became
so-named as early as 1762 because the first documented account of the Earl’s
culinary innovation was written in 1770 but it certainly caught on.The sandwich board, the two-sided mobile advertising
carried on the shoulders, is from 1864.The
Wall Street Journal once described the sandwich as "Britain's biggest contribution to gastronomy" but,
given the parlous reputation of the rest of their cuisine, the WSJ may have
been damning with faint praise.Regardless, while Sandwich may have lent his name, the historical record
suggests sandwiches have been eaten since bread was first baked, pre-dating the
earl by thousands of years.
Portrait of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1783) by Thomas Gainsborough (c 1727-1788), National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
John Montagu was one of the more interesting
chaps to sit in the House of Lords.Rich
and well-connected, he was a libertine in the milieu of the aristocratic debauchery
of the eighteenth century, his country house described by a contemporary as
“the scene of our youthful debaucheries, the retreat of your hoary
licentiousness.”There’s never been any
suggestion Sandwich was more depraved than many of his companions in
self-indulgence but he certainly fitted-in.
In his lifetime, the earl’s fame came not from the
eponymoussnack but his long affair with Miss Martha Ray (1746-1779), a most
becoming and talented young singer.It’s
never been known when first they made friends but she lived with him as his
mistress from the age of seventeen (he was then forty-five), the relationship
producing nine children. The concubinage of Miss Ray he enjoyed while his wife was suffering from mental illness and while it’s not recorded
if her condition was in any way related to her husband’s conduct, given he conducted
an affair also with his sister-in-law, there must be some suspicion.
Montagu's behavior attracted the interest of many,
including John Wilkes, a prominent satirist who wrote a number of pieces
critical of the earl’s politics and ridiculing his (not so) private life.Montagu’s revenge was swift.Wilkes didn’t write only publicly-published
satire, he also had a small circle of socially elite subscribers to his other
literary output.That was pornography,
and the earl was a subscriber.To
discredit Wilkes, Lord Sandwich rose in the House of Lords and read extracts
from Wilkes’ The Essay on Women which
he prefaced by telling their lordships “…it
was so full of filthy langue (sic)as
well as the most horrid blasphemies”.The earl did not exaggerate and even today the words would shock and appall their lordships although it must be admitted, it's always been a place where members easily are appalled.
The vengeance backfired.The House of Lords ruled his speech a breach of
procedure which sounds a mild rebuke but in that place it was a damning censure.It also provoked Wilkes who responded with
tales of Sandwich’s “debauchery, miserliness and lack of good faith” and a biography
published in the 1760s labelled him “an arsonist and thief”.His reputation never recovered.
Portrait of Martha Ray by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735–1811)
Miss Ray’s end was sadder still.Sandwich gave her a generous allowance and obtained
a flat in Westminster so she had somewhere to live during those times when, for
whatever reason, she couldn’t stay in his house.He also introduced her to a young soldier,
James Hackman (circa 1752-1779) who became obsessed with her and soon turned into what would now
be called a stalker.In 1779, Hackman resigned
his commission to join the church and it seems he and Ms Ray may have had a brief
liaison but she declined his offers of marriage, apparently because she thought
his social status and financial means inadequate. Not handling rejection well, Hackman remained infatuated,
become increasingly jealous and continued the pursuit.
One evening in April 1779, he followed her to the
Royal Opera House at Covent Garden where he shot her dead, apparently under the
impression she had taken another lover, which may or may not have been
true.Immediately after the murder, Hackman
attempted suicide but succeeded only in wounding himself and was arrested.Two days after she was buried, the Reverend Hackman was
sentenced to be hanged and within the week he died on the Tyburn gallows at a public
execution before “a large crowd”.
With Lindsay Lohan on location in Ireland
for the shooting of the film Irish Wish,
Westport Café The Creel created a
sandwich to note the event.The Lindsay LoHam includes 'nduja sausage,
Monterey Jack cheese, mixed grated cheddar, caramelized onions and, naturally
enough given the name, ham.The film is
scheduled for release in 2023; the sandwich is available for a limited season.
Sandwich is a town in Barnstable County,
Massachusetts, its population 20,675 at the last census.It is the oldest town on Cape Cod and in 2014, Sandwich turned 375 years
old.Sandwich has a police department.They are the Sandwich Police.
One noted concoction is
the muffuletta, a thick, round sandwich similar to a hero, typically containing
ham, salami, and cheeses and topped with an olive salad, a specialty of New
Orleans. It seems first to have been
served in the late 1960s, the name from the Sicilian dialect, from the Italian muffoletta (a round hollow-centered loaf
of bread), from muffola (mitten),
from the French moufle. In New Orleans, among the muffuletta cognoscenti,
there is a heated faction and a room-temperature faction.
(1) A heavy stick, usually thicker at one end than at
the other, suitable for use as a weapon; a cudgel.
(2) A group of persons organized for a social,
literary, athletic, political, or other purpose.
(3) The building or rooms occupied by such a group.
(4) An organization that offers its subscribers
certain benefits, as discounts, bonuses, or interest, in return for regular
purchases or payments.
(5) In sport, a stick or bat used to drive a ball in
various games, as golf.
(6) A nightclub, especially one in which people dance
to popular music, drink, and socialize.
(7) A black trefoil-shaped figure on a playing card.
(8) To beat with or as with a club.
(9) To gather or form into a club-like mass.
(10) To contribute as one's share toward a joint
expense; make up by joint contribution (often followed by up or together).
(11) To defray by proportional shares.
(12) To combine or join together, as for a common
purpose.
(13) In nautical, use, to drift in a current with an
anchor, usually rigged with a spring, dragging or dangling to reduce speed.
(14) In casual military use, in the maneuvering of
troops, blunders in command whereby troops get into a position from which they
cannot extricate themselves by ordinary tactics.
(15) In zoological anatomy, a body part near the tail
of some dinosaurs and mammals
(16) In mathematical logic and set theory, a subset of
a limit ordinal which is closed under the order topology, and is unbounded
relative to the limit ordinal.
(17) In
axiomatic set theory, a set of combinatorial principles that are a weaker
version of the corresponding diamond principle.
(18) A birth
defect where one or both feet are rotated inwards and downward.
1175-1225:
From the Middle English clubbe,
derived from the Old Norse klubba (club
or cudgel) akin to clump, from Old English clympre
(lump of metal) related to the Middle High German klumpe (group of trees).The
Proto-Germanic klumbon was also related
to clump.Old English words for this
were sagol and cycgel.The Danish klőver and Dutch klaver (a club at cards) is literally "a clover."Ultimate root is the classical Latin globus
or glomus (forming into a globe or ball), a later influence the Middle Low
German kolve (bulb) and German Kolben (butt, bulb, club). The sense
of a "bat used in games" is from mid-fifteenth century; the club suit
in the deck of cards is from the 1560s although the pattern adopted on English
cards is the French trefoil.The social
club emerged in the 1660s, apparently an organic evolution from the verbal
sense "gather in a club-like mass", first noted in the 1620s, then,
as a noun, the "association of people", dating from the 1640s.The Club
Sandwich was probably first offered in 1899, the unrelated club soda in
1877, originally as the proprietary name Club
Soda.
The
Club Sandwich
A
majority of historians of food suggest the club
sandwich, as an item able to be ordered, first appeared on a menu in 1899 at the Union
Club of New York City.It was however
made with two toasted slices of bread with a layer of turkey or chicken and ham between them, served warm, not the
three slices with which it’s now associated; at that point the "club" was merely self referential of the institution at which it was served.Others suggest it originated in 1894 at an exclusive gambling club in
New York’s Saratoga Springs.The former is
more accepted because there’s documentary evidence while the latter based on
references in secondary sources.It’s a
mere etymological point; as a recipe, what’s now thought of as a club sandwich
had doubtless been eaten for decades or centuries before the words Club Sandwich appeared on a menu.
The notion
that club is actually an acronym for "chicken
and lettuce under bacon" appears to be a modern pop-culture invention, derived
from a British TV sitcom, Peter Kay’s Car
Share (episode 5: Unscripted, 7
May 2018) in what’s claimed to be an un-scripted take, although, on television,
very little is really ad-lib and "reality" has a specific technical meaning. On the show, the
discussion was about the difference between a BLT (bacon, lettuce & tomato) and a club sandwich. It spread quickly on the internet but was fake news.
Ground smoked sea salt & freshly cracked black peppercorns
Instructions
(1) Preheat a grill tray on medium. Place half the bread under grill and cook
until lightly toasted. Repeat with
remaining bread.
(2) Lightly brush both sides of bacon with oil. Place under grill and cook for 2-4 minutes
each side according to taste.Once
removed, place on a paper towel, turning over after one minute.
(3) Fry eggs, preferably leaving yokes soft and
runny.Fold tarragon into mayonnaise
according to taste.
(4) Spread 8 of the slices of toast with mayonnaise. Arrange half of the lettuce, turkey and
tomatoes over 4 slices. Evenly
distribute the fried eggs.
(5) Top with a second slice of toast with mayonnaise.
Then, add remaining lettuce, bacon and tomato. Season well with salt and
pepper. Top with remaining pieces of toast.
(6) Cut each sandwich in half or quarters according
to preference, using toothpicks driven through centre to secure construction.
Variations
Chefs are
a dictatorial lot and tend to insist a club sandwich must be a balanced
construction with no predominant or overwhelming taste or texture. Trick is to agree with everything they say and then make things to suit individual taste.By varying the
percentages of the ingredients, one can create things like a bacon club with
extras and vegetarian creations are rendered by swapping bacon and turkey for aubergine
and avocado.A surprising number find
tomato a mismatch, some add cheese or onion while many prefer butter to
mayonnaise. In
commercial operations like cafés, tradition is to serve clubs with French fries
but many now offer salads, often with a light vinaigrette dressing.Served with soup, it’s a meal.
(2) A sandwich consisting of a frankfurter (or some sort of sausage of similar shape) in a split
roll, eaten usually with (1) mustard, sauerkraut & relish or (2) Mustard
& ketchup.
(3) Someone who performs complex, showy, and sometimes
dangerous manoeuvres, especially in surfing or skiing (hotdogging sometimes a defined
class in competition).
(4) Someone thought a show-off, especially in sporting
competition.
(5) In informal use, an expression of joy, admiration or
delight (occasionally also used ironically in the manner of “that’s great”).
(6) In New Zealand, a battered, deep-fried sausage or
saveloy on a stick (essentially the same concept as the US corn dog and the
Australian Dagwood dog).
(7) In slang, the human penis, a variation of which is
the “man sausage”.
(8) In slang, a sexually suggestive physical gesture
involving hip movement (usually as hotdogging).
1894: A coining in US English for commercial purposes,
the idea being the vague resemblance of the sausage to a dachshund dog, the “hot”
from the traditional use of mustard as a condiment although there’s evidence
the early suspicion some hot dogs included actual canine meat weren’t entirely
without foundation.The use as (1) an
interjection expressing joy, admiration or delight was another US creation
dating from around the turn of the twentieth century (the circumstances
unknown) and (2) a descriptor of someone who performs showy, often dangerous
stunts was also an Americanism from the same era.It seems to have begin in sport and is still widely
used but has become best known for its use in skiing and surfing where it’s
institutionalized to the extent some competitive categories have been named
thus.The variation “hot diggety dog”
(also clipped to “hot diggety” was used in the same sense as the interjection “hot
dog”, the interpolated “diggety” there for emphasis and rhetorical effect.The slang synonyms (mostly in the US and not
applied exclusively to hot dogs) have included “tubular meat on a bun”, “frank”,
“frankfurt”, “frankfurter”, “glizzy”, “pimp steak”, “tube steak”, “wiener”, “weeny”,
“ballpark frank”, “cheese coney”, “cheese dog”, “Chicago-style”, “Chicago dog”,
“chili dog”, “Coney Island”, “corndog”, “footlong”, “junkyard dog”, “not dog”, “pig
in a blanket”, “steamie” “veggie dog” & “frankfurter in a bun”.In informal use, both single word
contractions (hotdog) and hyphenated forms (hot-dog, hot-dogger etc) are common
and “hot dog!” as an interjection is heard in the US, especially south of the
Mason-Dixon Line.
Extra mustard: Lindsay Lohan garnishing her hot dog, New York, 2010.
The construct was hot + dog.Hot was from the Middle English hot & hat, from the Old English hāt,
from the Proto-Germanic haitaz (hot),
from the primitive Indo-European kay-
(hot; to heat) and was cognate with the Scots hate & hait (hot), the
North Frisian hiet (hot), the Saterland
Frisian heet (hot), the West Frisian hjit (hot), the Dutch heet (hot), the Low German het (hot), the German Low German heet (hot), the German heiß (hot), the Danish hed (hot), the Swedish het (hot) and the Icelandic heitur (hot).Dog was from the Middle English dogge (source also of the Scots dug (dog)), from the Old English dogga & docga of uncertain origin.Interestingly, the original sense appears to have been of a “common dog”
(as opposed one well-bred), much as “cur” was later used and there’s evidence
it was applied especially to stocky dogs of an unpleasing appearance.Etymologists have pondered the origin:It may have been a pet-form diminutive with the
suffix -ga (the similar models being compare
frocga (frog) & picga (pig), appended to a base dog-, or
doc-(the origin and meaning of these unclear). Another possibility is Old
English dox (dark, swarthy) (a la frocga from frog) while some have suggested a link to the Proto-West Germanic dugan (to be suitable), the origin of
Old English dugan (to be good, worthy, useful), the English dow and the German
taugen; the theory is based on the idea that it could have been a child’s epithet
for dogs, used in the sense of “a good or helpful animal”.Few support that and more are persuaded there
may be some relationship with docce (stock, muscle), from the Proto-West
Germanic dokkā (round mass, ball, muscle, doll), from which English gained dock
(stumpy tail).In fourteenth century
England, hound (from the Old English hund)
was the general word applied to all domestic canines while dog referred to some
sub-types (typically those close in appearance to the modern mastiff and
bulldog.By the sixteenth century, dog
had displaced hound as the general word descriptor. The latter coming to be
restricted to breeds used for hunting and in the same era, the word dog was
adopted by several continental European languages as their word for mastiff. Unmodified, the English Hot Dog has been
borrowed by dozens of languages.Hot dog
is a noun, verb & adjective, hotdoggery & hotdogger are nouns,
hotdogging & hotdogged are verbs; the noun plural is hot dogs.
For the 2016 Texas State Fair, the manufacturer went retro, reviving the "Corny Dog" name although, in a sign of the times, vegetarian dogs were available.
The corn-dog (a frankfurter dipped in cornmeal batter, fried,
and served on a stick), although the process was patented in 1927, seems to
have come into existence between 1938-1942 (the sources differ with most preferring the latter) but it received
a lexicographical imprimatur of when it began to appear in dictionaries in 1949
and it was certainly on sale (then as the “corny dog”) at the 1942 Texas State
Fair.In Australia, the local variation
of the US corn dog is the Dagwood dog (a batter-covered hot dog sausage, deep
fried in batter, dipped in tomato sauce and eaten off a wooden stick), not to
be confused with the “battered sav”, a saveloy deep fried in a wheat
flour-based batter (as used for fish and chips and which usually doesn’t contain
cornmeal).The Dagwood Dog was named
after a character in the American comic strip Blondie.Dagwood, Blondie’s ineptly comical husband, did
have a dog albeit not one especially sausage-like and it may simply have been
it was at the time the country’s best known or most popular cartoon dog.
The hot dog as class-identifier: David Cameron showing how smart folk handle a hot dog while on the campaign trail, April 2015.
After
leaving Downing Street, Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister
1957-1963) visited Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1969-1969) in
the White House and was served lunch, a meal the former prime-minister found so
remarkable that in his memoirs it warranted an exclamation mark: Hotdogs! He didn’t comment further but it’s assumed his
experience of the culinary treat might have been the Old Etonian’s first and last. The hot dog certainly can be political, David
Cameron (b 1966; UK prime-minister 2010-2016 and another Old Etonian)
attracting derision after being photographed eating his hot dog with knife and
fork, something declared “out-of-touch” by the tabloid press which, while
usually decrying the class system, doesn’t miss a chance to scorn toffs
behaving to well or chavs too badly.
Cameron had other problems with takeaway snacks, caught being untruthful
about his history of enjoying Cornish pasties, another working class favourite. So it would seem for politicians, hot dogs
are compulsory but only if eaten in acceptable chav style.
Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) and David Cameron eating hot dogs (both in approved manner) at a college basketball game between Mississippi Valley State and Western Kentucky, Dayton Arena, Ohio, March 2012 (Western Kentucky won 59-56) (left) and UK Labour Party Politician Ed Miliband (b 1969) enjoying what came to be known as "the notorious bacon sandwich", May 2014 (right).
Curiously, Mr Cameron, had some three years earlier undergone "hot dog eating training", supervised by President Obama, noted for his expertise (both theoretical and practical) in the subject. So he knew how it should be done and immediately there was speculation he resorted to knife & fork to avoid any chance of something like Ed Miliband's "notorious bacon sandwich" moment, something which had resulted in ridicule and a flood of memes after the photograph was published by the Murdoch tabloid The Sun on the eve of a general election.
Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader
of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) enjoying a Dagwood dog in three
aspects, Brisbane Exhibition (Ekka), Australia, 2022. On seeing the photos, Mr Dutton observed of such things: "There is no good angle". In Australia, it’s probably good for a politician to be known to eat Dagwood dogs but not necessarily be photographed mid-munch. Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.
The Dagwood dog was responsible
for an amusing footnote in Australian legal history, a dispute from the 1949
Sydney Royal Easter Show played out in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in
its equity jurisdiction, the press reports at the time noting one
happy outcome being an “uninterrupted supply of hot dogs during the next few
days.” Hot dogs were one of the show’s big
sellers but a dispute arose when allegations were made there had been breaches
of letters patent for "improvements in sausage goods" giving the
patentees (who sold “Pronto Pups”) "exclusive enjoyment and profit within
Australia for sixteen years from September, 1946. The plaintiffs (holders of the patent),
sought an injunction against those who had begun selling “Dagwood Dogs" at
the show, preventing them from vending or supplying any of the improvements in
sausages described in the patent, the writ claiming Dagwood dogs embodied the
patented improvements and that as a consequence of the infringement, the plaintiffs
were suffering economic loss. The trial
judge, ordered a hearing for an assessment (a taking of accounts) of damages to
be scheduled for the following April and issued a temporary order requiring the
defendants undertook to pay into a trust account the sum of ½d (half a penny)
for each for each axially penetrated sausage sold. The culinary delight has since been a fixture
at city and country shows around the country although the name Pronto Pup didn’t
survive; after the judgment in the Supreme Court it was replaced by “Pluto
Pup” which also didn’t last although whether that was a consequence of a
C&D (a “cease & desist letter”) from Walt Disney’s lawyers isn’t known. Anyway, since then it’s been Dagwood dogs all
the way except in South Australia (proud of their convict-free past, they often
do things differently) where they’re knows as “Dippy Dogs” (an allusion to the
generous dip in the tomato sauce pot) which may be of Canadian origin, although
there. in at least some provinces, they’re sold as “Pogos”.
Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) paying attention to Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962).
There are a number of “hot dog” stories about the film
star Robert Mitchum, all told in the vein of him arriving at a Hollywood fancy-dress
party covered in tomato ketchup and when asked to explain replying: “I’m a hot dawg!”.That was representative of the sanitized form
in which the tale was usually published, the original apparently involved the
ketchup being applied to something which, anatomically, more resembled the hot
dog’s sausage.
Hotdog Stand color scheme, Microsoft Windows 3.1, 1992.
The industry legend is
the “Hotdog Stand” color scheme Microsoft in 1992 shipped with Windows 3.1 was
the winner of an informal contest between the designers to see who could
concoct the worst possible combination.Whether
or not the idea of the competition was alcohol-fueled depends on which version
of the story is told but all agree the winner based her entry on a vision of a hot dog, smothered
in mustard and ketchup.It’s doubtful
many deliberately chose “Hotdog Stand” as their default scheme although there were
certainly sysadmins (system administrators) who vengefully would impose it on
annoying users, the more vindictive adding insult to injury by ensuring the
user couldn’t change it back.However, Hotdog Stand did briefly find a niche because it turned out to be the scheme which
provided the best contrast on certain monochrome monitors, then still prevalent in corporations. Windows 3.1 was the first version of the environment (it sat atop the PC/MS/DR/NW-DOS operating system) to achieve wide corporate acceptance, whereas Windows 3.0 (1990) had tantalized while being still too unstable. Windows 3.0
was unusual in being (apart from the short-lived 1.0) the only version of Windows released
in a single version.Although it ran in
three modes: Real (on machines with only 640K RAM available), Standard
(requiring an 80286 CPU & 1 MB RAM) and Enhanced (requiring an 80386 CPU & 2 MB
RAM), it shipped as a single product, the user with a command line switch (/r, /s or /e respectively) able to "force" the mode of choice, depending on their hardware's specification.
The Hotdog Stand didn’t survive the upgrade to Windows
95 but a quarter of a century on, someone may have felt nostalgic because a buyer
of a 2016 Maserati GranTurismo MC Sport Line configured their car in bright
yellow (Giallo Granturismo) over leather
trim in red (Rosso Corallo).As eye-catching in 2016 as Microsoft's Hotdog Stand had
been in 1992, the Maserati’s recommended retail price was US$163,520.Displayed first at the 2007 Geneva Motor Show,
the Maserati GranTurismo (Tipo M145) remained in production until 2019, the MC
Sport Line offered between 2012-2019. It's not known how many buyers chose this color combination.
Joey Chestnut (b 1983) (left) and Miki Sudo (b 1986)
(right) the reigning men's and women's world champions in hot dog eating.The contest is conducted annually on 4 July,
US Independence Day.
In July 2022, Mr Chestnut retained and Ms Sudo regained
their titles as world champions in hot dog eating. Mr Chestnut consumed 15 more than the
runner-up so the victory was decisive although his total of 63 was short of his
personal best (PB) of 76, set in 2021. It’s
his fifteenth title and he has now won all but one of the last sixteen. Ms Sudo won her eighth championship, swallowing
forty hot dogs (including the bun) in the requisite ten minutes, meaning she
has now prevailed in eight of the last nine contests (in 2021 she was unable to defend her title, being with child and therefore thinking it best to avoid too many hot dogs).
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1989; chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890) famously observed that people "shouldn't see how laws or sausages are made". The processes (now effectively institutionalized) which produce legislation are now more disturbing even than in the iron chancellor's gut-wrenching times but sausage production has (generally) become more hygienic.
(2) A disc-shaped food patty (or patty on a bun), sometimes
containing ingredients other than beef including vegetarian concoctions.
(3) In Pakistani slang (usually derogatory), as burger or
hamburger, a stereotypically well-off Pakistani aspiring to a westernized
lifestyle.
(4) In Internet slang (apparently beginning on 4chan), an
American (as in a white, US citizen); of or relating to Americans.
(5) In computer graphical user interfaces (GUIs), as hamburger
button, an icon with three horizontal lines (the resemblance being to the
stacked ingredients of a burger).The
hamburger label was applied retrospectively, the original idea being to
represent a list, the icon’s purpose being to open up a list of options; it’s
thus also known as the “collapsed menu icon”.
1939: An invention of US English, extracted from hamburger
by misunderstanding (ham + burger).Use
of the noun hamburger is not exclusive to fast food.As early as 1616 it was noted as being the
standard description both of someone “a native of the city of Hamburg" and
also of ships “registered with Hamburg as their home port").From 1838 it was the name of a black grape
indigenous to Tyrolia and after 1857, a variety of hen.Technically the meat product is a specific
variation of shaped, ground beef (minced meat); as a meatball is a sphere and
meatloaf is a rectangular cuboid, hamburgers (and burgers) are discs.
Co-incidence of names: Earl Warren (1891–1974; Chief
Justice of the US 1953-1969 (right)), Richard Nixon (1913-1994; President of
the US 1969-1974 (centre)) & Warren Earl Burger (1907–1995; Chief Justice
of the US 1969-1986 (right), Washington DC, June 1969: Official photo released
after the formal ceremony making Burger the fifteenth chief justice.Neither judge, both appointed by Republican
presidents, much pleased the conservatives and the state of the court today is
the consequence of decades of pressure and some fortuitous timing in judicial
expiry.
Not that the burger is even exclusively fast food.Some very expensive burgers have been created
although, compared to their availability, there’s considerably less publicity about
their sales.As pieces of conspicuous
consumption they must have a niche but Netherlands diner De Daltons‘ (Hoofdstraat
151, 3781AD, Voorthuizen) opted to couple indulgence with a good cause, the
proceeds of their Golden Boy burger donated
to the local food bank.Emphasizing
quality rather than sheer bulk, the Golden
Boy was actually a good deal less hefty than some of the huge constructions
burger chains in the US have offered to satisfy the gulosity of some (burgers
with names like Heart Attack, XXXL, 55 oz
Challenge, One Pound of Elk, Sky-high Scrum, Monster Thickburger & Killer hardly subtle hints at the target
market).
Golden Boy.
By comparison, the price tag of €5,000 (US$5,100)
aside, the Golden Boy seems almost
restrained, though hardly modest, presented on a platter of whiskey-infused
smoke, its ingredients including Wagyu beef, king crab, beluga caviar, vintage
Iberico Jamon, smoked duck egg mayo, white truffle, Kopi Luwak coffee BBQ
sauce, pickled tiger tomato in Japanese matcha tea, all assembled on two Dom
Perignon infused gold-coated buns. The
chef insists it still just a burger and should be eaten using the hands, a nice
touch being that because the buns are covered in gold leaf, fingers will be
golden-tinted when the meal is finished.A Golden Boy must be ordered two weeks in advance and a deposit of €750 (US$765)
is required.
People around the world had no doubt for centuries been
creating meatloaves, meatballs and meat patties before they gained the names
associated with them in Western cuisine.The idea is simply to grind-up leftover or otherwise unusable cuts, add diced
vegetables & spices to taste and then blend with a thickening agent (flour,
breadcrumbs, eggs et al) to permit the mix to be rendered into whatever shape
is desired.The hamburger is no more an
invention of American commerce that the sandwich was of the English aristocracy.
Lindsay Lohan masticating burger,Blank Magazine, May 2011.
The words however certainly
belong to late-stage capitalism.Hamburger
is noted in the US as describing meat patties in the late nineteenth century
(initially as hamburg steak), the connection apparently associative with German
immigrants for whom the port of embarkation was often Hamburg although there is
also a documented reference from 1809 in Iceland which referred to “meat smoked
in the chimney” as Hamburg beef.There are a dozen or more stories which
speculate on the origin of the modern hamburger but, in the nature of such an
ephemeral craft, there is little extant evidence of the early product and there’s
no reason not to assume something so obvious wasn’t “invented” in many places
at much the same time.The earliest
known references which track the progression seem to be hamburger sandwich
(1902), hamburger (1909) & burger (1939) although burger was by then an element
in its own right, acting as a suffix for the cheeseburger (1938).The culinary variations are legion: baconburger;
cheeseburger; fishburger; beefburger; bacon & egg burger; whale burger, dog
burger & dolphin burger (those three still a thing in parts of the Far East
although not now widely publicized); vege burger; vegan burger; kangaroo
burger, camel burger & crocodile burger (the Australians have a surplus of
all these fine forms of animal protein), lamb burger, steakburger, soyburger,
porkburger etc. Opportunistic constructions like burgerlicious are created as required.The homophones are Berger
& burgher (in English use a middle-class or bourgeois person).The noun plural is burgers.
Blogger Dario D had noticed the Big Macs he bought from
random McDonalds outlets didn’t quite live up to the advertising.That’s probably true of much industrially
produced food but what was intriguing was what was revealed when he applied a
tape measure to his research.It seems
Big Macs can’t be made exactly like they look in the advertising because then
they would be too big to fit in the packaging.
The Big Mac Index (BMI) was created by the Economist
newspaper in 1986.The BMI is a price
index which provides an indicative measure of purchasing power parity (PPP)
between currencies and uses movements in the price to suggest whether an
official exchange rate is over or under-valued.The newspaper has never claimed the BMI is an authoritative economic
tool and has always documented its limitations but many economists have found
it interesting, not so much the result on any given day but as a trend which
can be charted against other metrics.It
was an imaginative approach, taking a single, almost standardized commodity
available in dozens of countries and indexing the price, something which should
in each place be most influenced by local factors including input costs (ingredients
& labour), regulatory compliance, corruption and marketing.Even those who don’t agree it has much
utility as an economic tool agree it’s fun and other have published variations
on the theme, using either a product made in one place and shipped afar or one
made with locally assembled imported components.
The BMI also brought to wider attention the odd quirk. Although its place in the lineup has been replaced by a chicken-based dish, the Big Mac used to be on the McDonald's menu in India although, in deference to Hindu sensitivities (and in some states actual proscription), it was made not with beef but with lamb. Apparently, it tasted exactly the same which seems a remarkable achievement.
Burgers can be thematic.These are based on the seven wonders of the ancient world:
The Colossus of Rhodes (that’s a big burger with Greek
lamb)
The Great Pyramid of Giza (has an Egyptian sauce)
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (vegetarian (lettuce
hanging out of it))
The Lighthouse of Alexandria (a lighter burger)
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (traditional high calorie
burger)
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (has a very, very hot
sauce)
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (made with square or
rectangular bun)
