Thread by @c0nc0rdance

I'm hungry: let's talk about #hotdogs.

1880's German immigrants brought a type of pork sausages, Frankfurter Würstchen, named for Frankfurt (hence 'franks') or, if mix pork/ beef, a Vienna (Wiener) Würstchen (hence "weiner").

But how did they come to be the hot dogs we know?

It was widely believed that disreputable street-corner sellers made them from stray dogs. Thomas Edison even made a 19024short film called "Dog Factory" showing dogs being shoved into a machine, and sausages coming out the other side.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm…

So, a hot dog was a derogatory reference to meat contents, probably aimed at insulting the vendor... that stuck. See cartoon, if you can make it out.

So where did the bun come from? Multiple versions of story, but I'll share some.

There's a story of German American immigrant Feuchtwanger who sold sausages from his cart, and loaned each customer a glove to protect hand from hot meat.

His losses from unreturned gloves prompted wife to suggest just handing out bread slices instead.

The idea stuck, grew.

Another version of the story centers on Coney Island, where the carts had small coal fires to heat bread and sausages, served separately, or together in an order.

Customers provided the innovation of combining them into an easy to carry dish while strolling the boardwalk.

There are a thousands variations of the hot dog (which is a sandwich, obviously), but honorable mention goes to Finland for developing the pølse i vaffel "hot dog in a waffle" that I am now dying to try to replicate: