The History of Hot Dogs
Historians believe that the lowly hot dog traces back to Roman emperor Nero’s personal chef, Gaius, when he oversaw the roasting of several slaughtered pigs. The custom then was to starve a pig for one week before slaughter, and when Gaius saw that one pig had been roasted without first being cleaned, he stuck a knife in its belly and saw empty intestines puffed up by the heat of the oven. Succumbing to an ah-ha moment, Gaius stuffed the intestines with ground meat mixed with spices and wheat, and the sausage was born.
The sausage spread out across Europe, and when it reached Germany, it morphed into a wide variety of versions, all of which paired nicely with beer and kraut. The German city of Frankfurt claims to be the birthplace of the modern hot dog, when in 1484, eight years before Columbus discovered North America—the frankfurter was born.
Vienna Austria or Wien in the germanic also claim that they are the true inventors of the hot dog or wienerwurst, which would later spread to America when German immigrants began to sell wieners from pushcarts in 1860s New York City.
History of Nathan’s Hot Dogs: The American (Hot Dog) Dream
Hot dogs spread to Coney Island by 1915, where a young Polish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker was employed in a hot dog stand, earning a whopping $11.00 per week slicing hot dog buns. Subsisting on nothing but hot dogs and sleeping on the kitchen floor for almost a year, when he had amassed $300.00, he opened Nathan’s hot dog stand across the street, selling hot dogs for half his old employer’s price—a nickel instead of a dime.
Customers soon flocked to his side of the street, putting his old employer out of business within months.
When FDR hosted English King George the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth when the royals were on a U.S. tour, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt opted for a picnic in Hyde Park, replete with grilled hot dogs on the menu, which caused many in the press to fret over the indignity of serving lowly American hot dogs to royalty. Instead, the king and queen loved the tubular delights, prompting the king to ask for seconds.
Today, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans spent $3 billion on hot dogs from supermarkets in 2018, while in 2021, Americans are expected to consume seven billion hot dogs on Memorial Day and Labor Day respectively. Hot dog consumption on Independence day pales by comparison—a mere 150 million dogs—which if lined up end-to-end would stretch from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, five times there and back.