BIG BEEF BURGER MESH HAT from Zazzle.com

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A hamburger (or simply burger) is a sandwich that consists of a cooked patty of ground meat that is fried, steamed, grilled, or broiled, and is generally served with various condiments and toppings inside a sliced bun baked specially for this purpose. Hamburgers are often served with french fries or onion rings. Hamburger also refers to the cooked patty of ground meat (usually beef) by itself.The patty alone is also known as a beefburger, or burger. This type of meat can be used in boxed dinners such as "Hamburger Helper". Hamburger is actually a distinct product from ground round and other types of ground meat. However, ground beef of any form is often commonly referred to as "hamburger." A recipe calling for 'hamburger' (the non-countable noun) would require ground beef or beef substitute- not a whole sandwich. Hamburger does not refer to ham. ***************************************** The word "Hamburger" comes from Hamburg, Germany; the inhabitants of this city are also known as "Hamburger" in German but as Hamburgians in English.[citation needed] In Germany, local traditional snacks are often named after the place of origin, like the Frankfurter (also known as a hotdog), the Berliner (a jam doughnut) or Thüringer (Bratwurst). In Hamburg it was common to put a piece of roast pork into a roll, called Rundstück warm, although this is missing the "essence" of the modern hamburger, which is ground meat. However, another theory states that in Hamburg, meatscraps similar to modern ground beef were served on a Brötchen, a round bun-shaped piece of bread. It is said that German immigrants then took the Hamburger to the United States. ***************************************** Many believe the first hamburgers in U.S. history were served in a sandwich shop established in 1895. Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, is sometimes credited with having invented this quick businessman's meal when he sandwiched a hamburger between two pieces of white toast for a busy office worker in 1900. Louis' Lunch flame broils the hamburgers in the original 1898 Bridge & Beach vertical cast iron gas stoves with locally developed broilers to hold the hamburgers in place while they cook. ********************************* Louis' Lunch's claim is widely disputed, however. In 1974, The New York Times ran a story about Louis' Lunch and stated that a serious challenge to the title is a theory supported by the McDonald's Corporation, the nationwide hamburger chain. An uknown McDonald's historian claims the inventor was an unknown food vendor at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 even though this has not been corroborated. Newspaper columnist, amateur Texas historian, and restaurateur Frank X. Tolbert asserted that this food vendor was Fletcher Davis. Davis operated a café at 115 Tyler Street on the north side of the courthouse square in Athens, Texas, in the late 1880s. Local lore holds that Davis was selling an unnamed sandwich of ground beef at his lunch counter at that time. In 1904, Davis and his wife Ciddy, with backing from local business, took their sandwich to the 1904 World's Fair. Fletcher and Ciddy Davis launched their invention from "Old Dave's Hamburger Stand", located on the midway at the fair. A reference to a New York Tribune article written at the time about the fair called a hamburger the innovation of a food vendor on the pike. Tolbert claimed that Old Dave was Fletcher Davis from Athens. Others support this theory even though the article cannot be found in the archives of the New York Tribune newspaper. During the 1980s Dairy Queen ran a commercial filmed in Athens, calling the town the birthplace of the hamburger. In November 2006, The Texas State Legislature introduced Bill HCR-15, designating Athens as the "Original Home of the Hamburger". In 2000, the United States Library of Congress credited Louis' Lunch with making America's first hamburger.