Is There Really A Difference Between Hot Dogs And Frankfurters?

Hot dogs aren't just delicious; they're also an iconic representation of American cuisine, for better or worse. Since their culinary debut in the early 20th century, they've become a staple at baseball games, barbecues, and the couches of anyone who feels like microwaving a meal ready in under two minutes (no judgment here). Their cultural impact can be summed up not just by the variety of regional American hot dog styles but also by the endless furor over one internet question: Is a hot dog a sandwich? (Yes.)

Hot dog isn't their only name, of course. There's also wiener, coney, red hot — and frankfurter. The latter is particularly intriguing because it refers to a city in Germany. So does that mean hot dogs were invented in Germany rather than America? And if they were created here, why are they called that? Is there really a difference between hot dogs and frankfurters? The answers to the first couple of questions are complicated, but as to the last one: Oh, very much, yes.

We love to joke now about how hot dogs are scraped-up tubes of whatever was left on the meat packing floor, but ironically, the creation of the original frankfurter revolved around the specific meat used in its construction. The Frankfurter wurstchen is a long, thin German pork sausage (not served on a bun, though) dating to the 13th century, and if you look at it, you can see the resemblance. In the 19th century, a butcher brought it to Vienna and changed the name to "frankfurter" since he added beef to the pork mixture. This is also where it picked up the name "wiener" through linguistic drift from "Vienna."

It wasn't until later that it was stuck into a split-top roll, and the modern version of the hot dog was born. The thing is, we don't exactly know when that happened. It might've been in 1900 at a baseball game at the Polo Grounds by concessioner Harry M. Stevens, or it could've been in St. Louis in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, or it could've been much earlier on Coney Island by Charles Feltman. We just don't know for sure.

One thing we do know is that while "frankfurter" has become synonymous with "hot dog" today, it's not technically accurate. Though the hot dog clearly descended from the frankfurter, the Frankfurter wurstchen is a separate dish.

There's another food with similarly German origins (as well as an obviously German name) that now bears little to no resemblance to its original form, and it's a hot dog's best backyard barbecue pal: the hamburger. Much like Frankfurt, Hamburg is a German city that ultimately gave its name to the iconic meat sandwich we all know and love today. The hamburger's origins are muddled (it may or may not descend from a dish called the Rundstuck warm), but it didn't look like it does today. What was initially called a "hamburger" could look more like either Salisbury steak or steak tartare, depending on where (and when) you were ordering it.

It started showing up on bread sometime in the late 19th century, but it wasn't until 1920 that we saw its modern iteration, from White Castle of all places. Flattening the patties on the grill seems to have been a White Castle signature invention, paving the way for fast food and the burger we know now. So while German restaurants don't show up with the same frequency in America today as, say, Italian ones, between hot dogs and hamburgers, much of what the world knows as "American cuisine" originally came from Germany.