We have always been curious to find out why a hotdog is called a “hotdog”.
So recently we decided to do a little internet surfing and here’s what we found:
The origin of hot dogs started all the way from the main ingredient – the sausage. There is some disagreement though as to whether the Austrians or the Germans invented the sausage. However, most people will credit the origin of sausages to the city of Frankfurt in Germany around the late 1400s. The frankfurter sausage was later nicknamed as “dachshund sausage” by a Frankfurt butcher who happened to own a dachshund (a dog with a pretty long body).
It is from Europe that the “dachshund” sausage was introduced to North America. Again it is not quite clear who actually was the first to introduce sausages with bread roll in the States. Whoever it was, the “dachshund” sausage roll became a very popular fast food in the early 1890s in Chicago where it spread to the rest of the country. People began to serve the “dachshund” sausage rolls in baseball parks and soon having hotdogs at the games became an American tradition.
It was in 1901 during one of such games that the vendors were peddling piping hot “dachshund” sausage rolls. A sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, heard the vendors hawking their “dachshund” sausage rolls and drew a cartoon of barking dachschund sausages nestled warmly in bread rolls. The term “hotdog” was immortalized when Dorgan was unable to spell “dachshund” and instead settled with the term “hotdogs” !
And that’s how hotdogs came to be !
