There are several serious claims to authorship for the hamburger.
The hamburger chain White Castle traces the ancestry back to a Hamburg, Germany, cook named Otto Kuase, who in 1891 was celebrated for a sandwich made with a beef patty cooked in butter, topped with a fried egg. The German sailors brought the recipe to the United States, where the egg was dropped.
Residents of Seymour, Wis., home of the Hamburger Hall of Fame, argue that one of their hometown heroes, “Hamburger Charlie” Nagreen, created the hamburger at age 15 when he served the first hamburger from a stand at the Outgamie County Fair in 1885.
Others give the honor to Frank Menches of Ohio, who resorted to replacing beef for the pork in his famous sausages during a heat wave, and took the result to the World’s Fair. Connecticut relatives of New Haven restaurateur Louis Lassen say they have notarized statements backing up his claim to be the originator.
John Harmon, a Central Connecticut State University geographer who attempted to document the various claims, said he was unable to conclude who was really “the first.” Harmon said there is evidence the hamburger was around in America in the late 19th century, but “the date of the 1904 St. Louis [World’s Fair] is clear, and this is when the ‘world’ became aware of the hamburger.
Within two decades, its popularity mushroomed thanks to another American invention: marketing. The most common meals of the time were sausages and hotdogs, reflecting the influx of Jewish and German immigrants. Americans were wary of what might be in ground-up meat thanks to Upton Sinclair’s landmark expose of Chicago meat packers, ‘The Jungle.’”
Lance Gay. “Hamburger’s origins unclear, but became popular 100 years ago” San Angelo Standard Times. 18 March 2004. <www.texaswest.com/sast/news_national/article/0,1897,SAST_4957_2739911,00.html> (20 March 2004).