I learned today on the BBC that the original hotdog was born in New York in 1867.
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190702-the-truth-about-the-us-most-iconic-food
In fact it seems to have been a "Frankfurter Wurst" in a "Brötchen"
 always ask for a lot of roasted onion together with the sausage as long stayed on the baking plate as possible and with nearly charcoal at the edges of the parts of onionrings. And then a long zig zag of musterd on the sausage when it sits together with the onion in the halfopened bread.
In that my partner and I agree the most...


But that is not the image of what we eat in reality...nothing at all...in all the images I didn't find not a single one...and in fact it is made with all the ingredients as on the photo...unbelievable...




And I always thought that "ein strammer Max" was also a kind of "strammer" sausage, but how wrong I were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strammer_Max
The original Strammer Max is a slice of bread, sometimes fried in butter, covered with ham and fried egg.





Kind regards from Paul.

Since I have discovered I'm coeliac I can't have vegetarian sausages anymore - well at least I haven't yet come across any that have other ingredients besides wheat to fill them out.  I don't know every type of vegetarian sausage out there of course.

Paul,

 Is the Dutch equivalent of a  "Strammer Max"  not a " Uitsmijter"


Dirk

Yes Dirk, it is an "uitsmijter". It is mentioned in the wiki I provided in English here above.

But they say in that wiki that it is in Dutch also a "bouncer". I don't know if you say "uitsmijter" for a "bouncer", but overhere we say an "buitensmijter" or "buitenwipper"...

And the "uitsmijter" that we many times have eaten in the Hema supermarket was quite sometihing others...or was that a "smos"?

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

In fact it seems to have been a "Frankfurter Wurst" in a "Brötchen"

A sausage in a bread roll is the basic definition of a hot dog. But what kind of sausage, however, is a matter of debate. The common name for a classic hot dog sausage is a frankfurter. Yet there is no definition of exactly what a frankfurter is. There isn’t even agreement upon which Frankfurt is being referred to. Different claims have been put forward from Frankfurt-am-Main and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and even Frankfort, Kentucky. The strongest case comes from Frankfurt-am-Main where there is a smoked sausage which has a protected name of origin as a Frankfurter. This is similar but not identical to the commonly known hot dog frankfurter. In North America the hot dog frankfurter is further differentiated between a long sausage ‘a frankfurter’ and a short sausage ‘a wiener’.

The ingredients of a hot dog sausage also vary. A Frankfurter is made with pork while a frankfurter or wiener can be made with pork and/or chicken and/or turkey and other fillings. The latter can therefore be lighter in colour. It can also be viewed as being of lesser quality. Whereas a Frankfurter has protected geographical status, it’s almost the reverse case with the frankfurter/wiener. In Frankfurt a frankfurter is called a wiener, while in Vienna a wiener is called a frankfurter. Nobody seems to want to take ownership of it.

Some suggest that the Frankfurter is an imitation of a 16th century Spanish chorizo which at that time was more of a smoked sausage rather than a cured salami as today. The story relates to Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress. It goes that a Frankfurt butcher devised the sausage to remind the famously homesick Maria of her Spanish homeland at the time of her husband Maximilian’s election and coronation as king of the Romans in 1562. It was the first time that Frankfurt would host the event and the city fathers were keen to put on their best face. There is, however, no evidence that Maria even accompanied Maximilian to Frankfurt for the ceremony. Indeed, the arch-catholic Maria disapproved because the electors included protestants and the coronation would not be performed by the Pope. She did, however, later accompany Maximilian to Pressburg for their joint coronation as king and queen of Hungary.




(Maria of Austria, daughter of the emperor Charles V and sister of king Philip II of Spain. Was the Frankfurter devised in her honour?)


A frankfurter is also a cheap sausage to produce and is easy and quick to cook - just boil in water. This made them ideal for catering at mass events. A hot dog, however, doesn’t necessarily have to involve a smoked frankfurter. Any sausage can be used and neither does it have to be boiled. Indeed, some gastro-vans in Britain pride themselves on selling hot dogs which do not feature frankfurters at all. The sausages used are likely to be quality British sausages with a high meat content. There has been a revolution in this over the last couple of decades. 30 years ago, hot dogs bought from vans outside sports stadia, music venues or travelling funfairs used to have a dreadful reputation and were best avoided. Now, however, a hot dog on sale from a van outside a sports stadium is more likely to be of infinitely better quality in terms of the sausages used and the freshness of the bread, than that on offer from the over-priced bars inside.

Regarding the 'long ziz zag of mustard' mentioned by Paul Ryckier, there was once witnessed an episode in front of a British hot dog stand involving an English boyfriend and Finnish girlfriend. The girlfriend took hold of a dispenser of mustard. The boyfriend warned her to only put a little on her hot dog. “Oh, but I like mustard.” she said “In Finland we call it sinappi.” Sinappi is the Finnish equivalent of the German senf, a sweet continental yellow mustard with a gentle heat. A bit like America’s French’s. “But that’s not sinappi” said the boyfriend “that’s English mustard, that’s Colman’s.” She ignored his advice …  

Eating a sausage with bread is such an obvious meal. Whether it’s a white bread roll for a hot dog or a crust of granary wholemeal for a sausage sandwich, people must have been eating similar for centuries. Yet reference to sausages (let alone sausage sandwiches) in the English language is surprisingly sparse. Neither Geoffrey Chaucer nor William Shakespeare mention sausages in their writings. Nor is a recipe for sausages to be found in Richard of Bordeaux’ Forme of Cury. Samuel Pepys, however, does refer to sausages. In his diary entry for Tuesday the 12th of November 1661 he writes:

Thence to the Greyhound in Fleet Street, and there drank some raspberry sack and eat some sausages, and so home very merry.  

I don’t know what ‘raspberry sack’ is (a liqueur or a punch presumably) but it sounds like a ghastly thing with which to wash down sausages. He seemed to enjoy himself though. I hope he didn’t have a hangover because the following morning he had to wait upon the dressing of the Duke of York at his house which was in mourning because the funeral of the grandmother of the Duke’s wife Anne Hyde was to take place later that day.    

Returning to hot dogs, then there is a memorable scene from the 1941 war film 49th Parallel in which 3 German sailors, on the run across Canada after their U-boat is sunk in Hudson’s Bay, arrive in Winnipeg hungry and penniless. It’s a wet, rainy night in Manitoba and the starving sailors are tormented by the sight of restaurants and food bars with windows displaying roast chicken and saumon-en-croute etc. There are also cheery neon-signs from various eateries and shops offering fish & chips, hamburgers, chop suey, charcoal-broiled steak & chops or even just a packet of nuts. The Germans sell the commander’s pair of binoculars for money and get themselves something to eat in a diner. They choose hot dogs!

49th Parallel (1941)
(about 1:17:16 in)

If you’ve never seen the film before, then I’d recommend watching the whole thing from the start. It’s unashamedly propagandistic but nostalgic and highly enjoyable for that. There’s also a wonderful music score by Ralph Vaughn Williams. It’s arguably the finest production from the partnership of filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Vizzer wrote:

Eating a sausage with bread is such an obvious meal. Whether it’s a white bread roll for a hot dog or a crust of granary wholemeal for a sausage sandwich, people must have been eating similar for centuries. Yet reference to sausages (let alone sausage sandwiches) in the English language is surprisingly sparse. Neither Geoffrey Chaucer nor William Shakespeare mention sausages in their writings. Nor is a recipe for sausages to be found in Richard of Bordeaux’ Forme of Cury.

The Forme of Cury was written in about 1390 and is generally attributed to the master cook (or cooks) who served king Richard II of England, or Richard of Bordeaux as you call him. It thus gives recipes for fancy royal food rather than for common fare and so that's probably why it makes no mention of any sort of sausage. Nevertheless two centuries earlier, Alexander Neckam's two-volume encyclopedic work, De utensilibus (on utensils) and De naturis rerum (on natural things) - both written in about 1190 - mention sausages in terms that are still recognisable today. In De utensilibus, amongst a dictionary of Anglo-Norman cooking terms and the words for various items of kitchen equipment, he refers to "andulyces, saucistres et pudingis" - that is andouilles, sausages and puddings. The word 'sausage' is derived from Norman-French, although essentially it come from Roman Latin, meaning just something 'salted' and so it actually has much the same origin as 'salad'. In England after the fall of Rome 'pudding' was often the local term and hence why it has remained, at least regionally, the usual name for many of the plumper types of sausage, such as haggis, white puddings and blood pudding.

Incidentally Alexander Neckam in De utensilibus seems to be the first European writer to refer to the Chinese invention of using a magnetised iron needle floating in a bowl of water as an aid to navigation, and moreover his description is written in such a way as to suggest that this wasn't a particularly new discovery but was already known to many European mariners of the time. Neckam shared his birthday with Richard I, and his mother, Hodierna of St Albans, was hired by the royal household of Henry II to serve as a wet nurse for the future monarch. As a result Alexander was raised as Richard's foster-brother in their early years and he eventually rose to become Abbot of Cirencester.

Although sausages aren't mentioned by name in the Forme of Cury, it does still contain many recipes for similar, finely-chopped meaty foods, such as haslet (hastelete), brawn (braun or braon), rissoles (ruscheues, ruschewys or raysols) and fried meatballs (called pompes or pommedorrys, from pommes dorées, ie 'gilded apples'). Meanwhile recipes for haggis (hagws of a schepe) are given in the Liber Cure Cocorum and in the Austin manuscript which both date from about 1430.

Vizzer wrote:

I don’t know what ‘raspberry sack’ is (a liqueur or a punch presumably) but it sounds like a ghastly thing with which to wash down sausages.

I think 'Rasberry Sack' must have been a bit like the French cocktail, kir, which is made by adding crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) to white wine, or to champagne for kir royale. Alcoholic fruit-based 'cordials' were all the rage in Pepys' time. Here's a recipe for raspberry sack from The Queen's Closet Opened which was published in 1655 by "W.M." who is usually taken to be Walter Montague, the confessor and almoner of Queen Henrietta Maria, the exiled widow of Charles I.



But since this is a thread primarily about sausages, here also is Walter Montague's recipe for 'good' pork sausages. Note how they are intended to be boiled, like hotdogs, rather than grilled or fried, because as he says they'd be liable to split.



The ancient Romans were also partial to sausages with several classical authors making reference to Lucanian sausages amongst other specific types. A fondness for Lucanicas was supposedly brought back to Rome by soldiers who had served in Lucania (a region in the 'heel' of Italy) probably around the time of Cato the Elder, while the name is still reflected in the modern Greek word for a sausage, λουκάνικο (loukaniko). Peppery and spicey these Roman Lucanicas were a preserved smoked sausage that could be eaten without further cooking, or might be boiled or grilled, and were often sold (either hot or cold) by street-vendors. Seneca (AD 4-65) in one of his letters to his friend Lucilius (Letter No.56) complains about the noise from the street outside his apartment window: "Then the cake-seller with his varied cries, the sausage-man, the confectioner, and all the vendors of food hawking their wares, each with his own distinctive accent.".

Here's an old recipe for Lucanian sausages from De Re Coquinaria (on Cooking) by the fifth century writer, Apicius.



Lucanican sausages are made in the same way as above [the previous recipe for blood sausage stuffed in a pig's intestine]. Grind pepper, cumin, savoury, rue, parsely, condiment [an unspecified mix of dried herbs and spices] bay berries and garum [the ubiquitous Roman fermented fish sauce]. Mix this with well minced pork then knead the mix again to a uniform consistency. Mix with garum, whole pepper-corns, a good deal of fat and pine kernels. Stuff into a pig's intestine and pull this thin then hang like this in the smoke above the fire.

Going back still further the Greek dramatist Epicharmus of Kos in about 500BC wrote a comedy titled Orya (usually translated as 'The Sausage' although I think it might originally have meant something more like a burger or kofte), while Aristophanes' 424BC satirical play Hippeîs (The Knights) has as its antihero a lowly sausage-seller who manages to win the confidence and approval of the People (the Demos) and so gets elected leader. There's even a 2000BC Akkadian cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia that records a dish of intestine casings filled with some sort of forcemeat stuffing.