As one of the most iconic arrangements of foodstuffs in the modern world, it would be a high honor to say you were the person who invented it. And so, many have stepped forward to seize the crown. Unfortunately, due to the fact that there’s so many contenders, exacerbated by the fact that beef between two slices of bread isn’t a particularly outlandish thing to try, there is no clear originator. And barring some stunning new discovery of irrefutable hamburger evidence, it seems likely to stay that way.
Louis Lassen of Louis’
Lunch
Connecticut is all too happy to claim fame as the birthplace of the hamburger. The tale you’ll hear concerns one Louis Lassen, owner of “Louis’ Lunch” in New Haven. Per legend, right at the turn of the century in 1900, a mysterious customer who was in search of something they could eat on the go — a common plot device in these food invention tales — was handed two pieces of toast with steak trimmings sandwiched between.
Never mind the fact that there were plenty of previously existing items that could have been eaten on the go without having to invent a whole new food, the hamburger itself was already around. As recorded by the Washington Post, there were newspaper ads listing hamburgers by name years before Louis’ supposed breakthrough.
Charlie Nagreen
Nagreen was pretty confident about his claim, going for much of his life by the nickname “Hamburger Charlie.” According to him, he begat the burger in 1885 at the Seymour, Wisconsin summer fair.
However, I have some bones to pick with Nagreen’s tale. First, he said he invented it by taking a meatball and sticking it in between two pieces of bread, which arguably, is not a burger at all. Functionally, yes, you’re getting much of the same bits, but by admitting it was a meatball, you can only lay claim to the world’s first — and shortest — meatball sub. Now, could we argue ad nauseam about whether a hamburger is a squashed meatball? Of course, but thankfully, there’s enough competing options that it doesn’t need to come to that.
Frank and Charles Menches
Another county fair, another claim of the hamburger’s origination. This time, coming from the Menches brothers in, well, Hamburg, New York, which immediately gives it an air of legitimacy.
The Menches’ version of the tale goes that their long-gone relatives were selling sausage sandwiches at the Hamburg fair, when they ran out of sausage. Obviously, this is a huge roadblock to creating more sausage sandwiches, and so, they reluctantly had to switch to what was available: ground beef. When asked for a name, they went the Usual Suspects route, looking up at the Hamburg sign and naming it the hamburger.
Points against them: Their supposed recipe, which was ground beef mixed with brown sugar and coffee, sounds absolutely putrid, and I can’t imagine it leading to any repeat customers, much less a culinary revolution.
Fletcher Davis
I’ll admit that this story has a couple details going for it. It’s the popular telling in Texas, given that it takes place in that same state, in the city of Athens. Texas does, at least emotionally, feel like a good place for the hamburger to rear its head for the first time. Moreover, Fletcher Davis’ claimed timeline does get on the scene early enough to beat some other claimants, with the burger’s invention being pegged to the late 1880s. Davis is even identified in some accounts as being the very vendor that brought the hamburger to the wider world via the 1904 World’s Fair. Also, his recipe, unlike improvised steak or faux-sausage sandwiches, sounds spot-on, being served with mustard, onions and a pickle on the side.
Apicius
If I were forced to choose between the above options, I’d probably settle on Fletcher Davis. However, any alleged hamburger originator faces some steep competition that dates back almost all the way to Christ. There is a recipe for something very close to a hamburger in the famous self-titled cookbook of a Roman by the name of Apicius. It calls for a cooked patty made of minced meat, spices and nuts, taking plenty of air out of modern burger invention claims.