The word hamburger dates back to 1834 where it appeared on a menu from Delmonico’s restaurant in New York. At that time, and even into the twentieth century, hamburgers were better known as hamburger steak, a kind of beefsteak ground in the style of butchers from Hamburg, a city in Germany. The name of this city derives in part from the German burg, a word meaning fort and related to the English word borough; the ham part of Hamburg is likely the German ham that means port, the city having long been a harbour for ships. The hamburger, therefore, takes its name from a German phrase meaning portfort, just as die cheese known as Limburger, a name that appeared in English about the same time as hamburger, takes its name from a German phrase meaning linden-tree fort. In the 1930s, burger came to be used as a shortened form of hamburger, leading to all kinds of new burgers: nutburger in 1934, chickenburger in 1936, cheeseburger in 1938, and porkburger in 1939. The emergence of these new meat names so detached burger from the original word hamburger that restaurateurs became concerned that people would assume hamburgers contained ham; thus, in 1940 the word beefburger appeared as an alternate name for the hamburger. Another alternate name appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, Salisbury steak, named after J. H. Salisbury, an American doctor who advocated grinding food before eating it to make it easier to digest. Salisbury steak did not really catch on until the first World War, when some citizens of Allied countries made a concerted effort to replace “German” words with native English ones. British citizens who had German names even felt compelled to change them: in 1917, for example, the prominent Battenberg family—from whom Prince Philip descends—changed their surname to Mountbatten.
A hamburger is a patty made from freshly ground beef that is cooked by pan broiling, broiling, grilling, or baking, usually served on a soft round roll. It is often accompanied by catsup, relishes, and slices of raw tomato or onion. A cheeseburger is a hamburger topped with a slice of American or Swiss cheese and melted and browned in the broiler. Another variation is a double-decker burger, which features two patties with cheese in between. The hamburger is considered a national dish of the United States and has become increasingly popular in Great Britain and Europe.