It also wasn't called a burger in Germany, it was called a Hamburg steak. Do you really think German, the language known for being able to craft oddly specific words, would choose a word already understood to mean 'a person from Hamburg' to describe an iteration on a food staple that shared a name with the town? Kartoffelsalat, Apfelstrudel, and Schweinebraten would like a word with you.
Shortening “Hamburg steak sandwich” to “hamburger” makes perfect sense in English, but it’s something no native German speaker of the 19th century would have done. What instead seems to have happened is Germany migrants brought the Hamburg steak to America as food item, and Americans opted to put it in sandwich form. Subsequent additions, such as cheese or other toppings, are easily traced to US origins anyway, so even if we ignore all the lead up, the modern incarnation definitely has American influence, and to deny this is to ignore typical culinary evolution - no one would suggest marinara sauce isn't Italian, even though tomatoes come from the Americas. And no one ever seems to argue that Boston Creme Pie is French because it uses custard. Cross cultural influences on food, in every other nation, are generally accepted as belonging to the nation where the changes occurred. There isn't a single fucking person on this planet who would suggest Korean Barbecue or US Southern Barbecue is a Caribbean food, even though that's where the word Barbecue COMES from, and in this case actually specifically refers to the style of cooking. Miss me with this specious 'hamburgers must be German because Hamburg' style reasoning that completely ignored semantic drift and language evolution.
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dailybridgerton
