Foodies around the world can easily relate to the tantalizing feeling that engulfs the belly at the mere mention of hamburgers. These super delicious burgers are actually modified forms of the good old sandwiches where an absolutely mouth watering cooked patty of ground meat is placed in the middle of the two halves of a sliced bread roll. Hamburgers acquire distinct tastes depending upon the add-ons they are served with, for instance, lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese and combinations of these apart from many others. A bite of a meaty hamburger with a little helping of some tangy ketchup is enough to unleash a hurricane of hunger juice inside millions of mouths in the world.
Hamburger derives a huge percentage if its name from the German city of Hamburg, and this is not without a reason. Many food enthusiasts around the world contest that the amazing arrangement of beef patties inside bread rolls gained popularity In the 17th century, German ports, especially Hamburg, were introduced to a particularly durable snack called the ‘tartare steak’ coming straight from Russia. There are people who believe that it was actually the Mongol army led by Genghis Khan that engendered the whole idea of beef patties and brought it to Russia, as early as the thirteenth century. If this were to be true, hamburgers can flaunt a food menu presence of as many as 900 years! In the fag end of the 18th century, however, the ‘Hamburg steak’ as the patty sandwiches came to be known at Hamburg, made inroads in the port bars and restaurants of all Germany and Europe. Even New York post side eateries started advertising the Hamburg steak to attract the German sailors. Though the form and ingredients of the hamburger at that time were not quite same as the present day, but those were the times when the name of hamburgers was slowly and steadily being etched on the food walls of fame of the world. The immigration of thousands of German natives who had been habitual eaters of the Hamburg steak to the United States also played a major role in the widespread popularity enjoyed by hamburgers.
In some parts of the world, hamburger might not necessarily mean a sandwich containing beef or pork patties, but then, even in these cases the term refers to a piece of beef, generally salted. This further strengthens the theories of those who attribute the origin of the term to the bread rolls containing beef patties that enjoyed widespread popularity in Hamburg.