Get Your Red-Hot History Lesson! How the Hot Dog Rose From Coney Island Carts to Platters at Presidential Picnics

"The hot dog's great success has always transcended class, wrapping the modern history of the United States into a portable bun. It all began with the five million German immigrants who arrived in two large waves from 1830 to 1890, during one of the Industrial Revolution's periods of rapid urbanization. The first hot dogs, then called frankfurters or wienerwursts, likely emerged in the mid-19th century,"

"The treats arrived on silver platters. After polishing off his first dog, the king went back for a second, and Washington, D.C.'s Times-Herald celebrated this expression of Anglo-American solidarity: "Today we can bellow down the Coney Island boardwalk, our voices uplifted in pride, that the hot dog truly makes the whole world kin." The hot dog's great success has always transcended class, wrapping the modern history of the United States into a portable bun."

"The first hot dogs, then called frankfurters or wienerwursts, likely emerged in the mid-19th century, when German immigrants started selling bun-wrapped sausages from pushcarts with coal-fed fireboxes in New York City's Bowery. These simmered or steamed sausages had that special Old World snap: finely ground pork or beef stuffed into natural casing that popped with the first bite, a sensation that hot dog purists still seek. Portable and tantalizingly inexpensive, these street eats were designed for teeming cityscapes."

The hot dog originated from German frankfurters and wienerwursts sold by immigrants in mid-19th-century New York City from pushcarts with coal-fed fireboxes. Finely ground pork or beef in natural casing produced an Old World snap that became prized by purists. Mass German immigration between 1830 and 1890 brought the sausage into urban street food culture. Weekend crowds at Coney Island and half-day Saturdays for workers created demand for cheap, portable foods. The hot dog's affordability and portability allowed it to cross class lines and become a central hand-held meal in American public life.

Read at Smithsonian Magazine