Have you ever made your own hamburgers? The recipe starts with ground beef, which makes the name “hamburger” seem like a misnomer. You can order a bacon hamburger if you’re really craving pork products, but that still doesn’t give us the “ham” in the name. For that, we have to go back to the origins of the food.
Since the 17th century, Germans have enjoyed a dish called frikedellen — flattened and pan-fried ground-meat patties. During the global German migration of the 19th century, immigrants introduced those culinary traditions to other areas around the world.
In the United States, locals created an anglicized alternative for frikedellen, leading to a new Americanism: “Hamburger steak.” This name referred to the city of Hamburg, Germany, which offered direct steamship service to New York for nearly 1 million German immigrants between 1836 and 1880.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an early mention of Hamburger steak appeared in the Ohio-based Eaton Democrat newspaper: “Sometimes we have what the Germans call a Hamburger steak, that is, the meat, chopped fine like sausage, flavored delicately with onions, and broiled rapidly.” These Hamburger steaks looked similar to modern hamburger patties but were served without buns and usually smothered in sauce.
Sometime in the late 19th century, U.S. chefs found inspiration in this German creation and came up with a similar recipe. They served the meat patties between two pieces of bread, and the name was shortened to “hamburger.” It wasn’t long before hamburgers came to be more closely associated with America than Germany, though the word continues to pay homage to the dish’s German roots.
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