Thursday, August 7, 2008

Why is a hotdog called a hotdog?

In 1987, Frankfurt, Germany celebrated the 500th birthday of the frankfurter, the hot dog sausage. Although, the people of Vienna (Wien), Austria will point out that their wiener sausages are proof of origin for the hot dog. (By the way, ham, being pork meat, is found in hotdogs.) According to Douglas B. Smith in his book "Every wonder why?" the hotdog was given its name by a cartoonist.

Hotdog

A butcher from Frankfurt who owned a dachshund named the long frankfurter sausage a "dachshund sausage," the dachshund being a slim dog with a long body. ("Dachshund" is German for "badger dog." They were originally bred for hunting badgers.) German immigrants introduced the dachshund sausage (and Hamburg meat) to the United States. In 1871, German butcher Charles Feltman opened the first "hotdog" stand in Coney Island in 1871, selling 3,684 dachshund sausages, most wrapped in a milk bread roll, during his first year in business.

In the meantime, frankfurters - and wieners - were sold as hot food by sausage sellers. In 1901, New York Times cartoonist T.A. Dargan noticed that one sausage seller used bread buns to handle the hot sausages after he burnt his fingers and decided to illustrate the incident. He wasn't sure of the spelling of dachshund and simply called it "hot dog."

Eating
Recipes for placing meat between slices of bread date back to Roman times. However, that was for steak, not minced meat. Thus, the steak burger is older than the hamburger!

Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey in the 9th century BC.

The tongue is a muscle with glands, sensory cells, and fatty tissue that helps to moisten food with saliva. You cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For instance, if salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to identify it. As soon as saliva is added, the salt dissolves and the taste sensation takes place.

There are 4 basic tastes. The salt and sweet taste buds are at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the base, and sour along the sides.

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