Felisa Rogers: How the Hot Dog Became the Most American Food

Felisa Rogers studied history and nonfiction writing at the Evergreen State College and went on to teach writing to kids for five years. She lives in Oregon’s coast range, where she works as a freelance writer and editor

As the Coney Island boardwalk gives way to textured cement, and traditional Coney Island haunts such as Ruby's and the Cha Cha celebrate their last summer in the shadow of forced demolition, it seems an opportune time to take a look at the history of Coney Island's most iconic emblem: the hot dog.

Although Coney Island is at the epicenter of hot dog history, the dog did not originate on the boardwalk. The lowbrow snack is the bastard American descendant of sausages brought to the New World by immigrants from Germany and Austria (hence the origin of a word that has been getting a lot of press lately: "wiener," which stems from the name of Austria's capital, Vienna, or Wien). Sausage vending was a relatively inexpensive home business for upwardly mobile immigrants, and by the 1860s, the strolling meat purveyors were a fixture of urban street scenes. On September 1894, the Duluth News Tribune described a visit to Chicago:

More numerous than the lunch wagon is the strolling salesman of "red hots." This individual clothed in ragged trousers, a white coat and cook's cap, and unlimited cheek, obstructs the night prowler at every corner. He carries a tank in which are swimming and sizzling hundreds of Frankforters or Wieners. These mysterious denizens of the steaming deep are sold for five cents, which modest charge includes an allowance of horseradish or some other tear-producing substance.

Early frankfurters were prepared in small butcher shops or kitchens and probably featured a coarser grind of meat than does the average modern hot dog, which is the product of emulsifying technology. But it's hard to pinpoint "average." Even today, the definition of "hot dog" is vague: Hot dogs can be made of beef or pork or both, with or without casings. According to the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink: "Most hot dogs are made from emulsified or finely chopped skeletal meats, but some contain organs and other 'variety' meats."