Hot Dog
Even though they were born in Europe, hot dogs have become as American as apple pie.
But why on earth are they called hot dogs?
In one version, hot dogs were originally called “dachshund sausages” because they looked like a long thin German dog, a “dachshund”. A newspaper cartoonist drew a picture of barking dachshunds between buns and labelled them “hot dogs” because he couldn’t spell “dachshund”. The trouble is, no one has ever found that cartoon, so we don’t know if it really happened!
Whatever they were called, they had become part of American culture by the 1920s. People ate them at baseball games, horse races, country fairs and circuses. Today, America is hot dog headquarters, but not everyone can agree on the perfect way to eat one!
New Yorkers like it with onions and sauerkraut, but folks from Chicago prefer it with tomatoes, pickles and peppers.
More »