The use of the word, “dog” has been synonymous with sausage since the mid-19th Century amidst claims that butchers were using dog meat to make them. “Hot Dog” as a name was thought to have been invented by a cartoonist, “TAD” Dorgan at the turn of the 20th Century as part of a cartoon of the New York Giants playing at their old ground, Polo Grounds in New York. This is disputed by hot dog aficionados and historians who claim TAD used the term during a bicycle race at Madison Square Gardens later in 1906.

The earliest and undisputed use of the term as another name for sausage is in the Knoxville Journal of Tennessee, where a reporter, Barry Popik used it when reporting on a game. There is also a reference to “hot dogs” being readied at a “service” at Yale University.

Whoever or wherever the term came into popular usage doesn’t really matter – hot dogs are a part of our culture and are here to stay.

No matter what they are called, hot dogs have been around for well over a century. Frankfurt, Germany probably has the most probable claim. Frankfurt gave rise to the “frankfurter”, also known as “franks” today, and it is in this town that the idea of serving the hot dog in a bun started. Another city, Vienna in Austria, also lays claim to the title of hot dog originator, and here “wieners” were first made (wiener is actually a corruption of Vienna).

To further complicate the origins myths of hot dogs, in Germany, a hot dog is known as a wiener and in Austria they are known as frankfurters!

Hot dogs are thought to have been introduced to the United States by German and Austrian immigrants. The first recorded hot dog vendor is in 1870 when Charles Feltman, a German immigrant started selling hot dogs at the resort town of Coney Island. Feltman certainly sold sausages in a bun, however the idea of using a bun to hold the sausage is given to Antonine Feuchtwanger whose husband sold hot dogs in St. Louis, Missouri. The idea came about because her husband became tired of seeing the gloves disappear and which he provided customers to use to eat the hot dogs as a service – he wanted his customers to only walk away with the food! The idea was to wrap the sausage in a bun and serve the sausage that way.

It was another German immigrant, Chris von der Ahe, who established the association hot dogs have with baseball. Ahe introduced hot dog vendors to the St Louis Browns, a club he owned, as well as to an amusement park which he also had a stake in. The trend caught on and a company, Harry M. Stevens, Inc. obtained the rights to provide hot dogs and other food and drink at a number of baseball and sporting events across the country.

Competition rose up and the hot dog concession spread across the country, to baseball fields, football matches, amusement parks and county fairs. Today, every major city or town has a hot dog seller, sporting events are not the same without them and you can find hot dogs being enjoyed in every state of the nation and across the world too.

Author Bio: Stevan Harrison is a freelance writer, who has a long history of many topics including concession trailers and hot dog trailers.

Category: Food and Drinks
Keywords: concession trailers, festivals, concession stands, food, hot dogs