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Germans, Sausages and Dachshunds: Oh, My! · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Hot Dog who is that? Our
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Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams Hot Diggity Dog, Chocolate Starfish,
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Speaker 1: Chocolate Starfish, then the.
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Speaker 2: Hot Dogs flavor water.
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Speaker 1: That's none other than mister Noel Brown no Diggity wonderful
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Speaker 1: co host brother and podcast arms, also the research associate
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Speaker 1: for today's episode.
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Speaker 2: And and the friend, the front person of olymp Biscuit
1:01
Speaker 2: cover band. I've been keeping that from you, guys. That's
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Speaker 2: what I do on the weekends when no one's looking. No,
1:08
Speaker 2: I'll be rolling. They hate him. Well, no, that's different.
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Speaker 2: I roll and rolling, rolling, rolling. Uh, and you're been
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Speaker 2: bowling bowling, bowling, balling. He already said that, You did
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Speaker 2: say that. I'm just fitting it into the whole Limp
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Speaker 2: Biscuit motif. I'm fucking at the top because we are
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Speaker 2: indeed talking about we're talking sausage. Yes, yes, hot dogs.
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Speaker 1: Indeed as you may as you maybor call, they're a
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Speaker 1: pretty big deal in the US culture. But the story
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Speaker 1: doesn't really start there, does it.
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Speaker 2: Does it? Ever? You know maybe maybe sometimes.
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Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes maybe sometimes, But it's it's funny because I
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Speaker 1: was thinking about your research here not too long ago,
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Speaker 1: when I was in a hurry to make dinner, and
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Speaker 1: I said, you know what, I'm gonna make a couple
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Speaker 1: of dogs.
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Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it right.
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna have some some relish, I'm gonna have a
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Speaker 1: little bit of onion, a little bit of chili, got
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Speaker 1: nasty with some cheese, and I thought, oh man, this
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Speaker 1: is such a great this is such a great food stuff.
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Speaker 1: But I think maybe we start here. I don't know
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Speaker 1: about you, man, but I've always been mystified by the cylindrical,
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Speaker 1: tubular dare we shay phallic shape of the hot dog must.
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Speaker 2: Happen, We must have been, but we will know it's true.
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Speaker 2: You can't really look at a hot dog and not
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Speaker 2: think that, at least for a hot second. And it
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Speaker 2: all goes. It all comes back to guts, man, It's
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Speaker 2: all about guts. Hot dogs do to your point, Ben,
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Speaker 2: And you can't hold a thing like that in your
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Speaker 2: hand not wonder about the story lineage of such a
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Speaker 2: delicious and handholdable snack. And most historians do trace their
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Speaker 2: origins to German sausages. But the idea of the sausage
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Speaker 2: of making a cylindrical meat product goes further back than that,
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Speaker 2: goes back, in fact, to sausages before the hot dog.
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Speaker 2: The hot dog's ancestor is, of course, the humble sausage,
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Speaker 2: and a lot of records, historical records reference a sausage
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Speaker 2: like food that first appeared in ancient civilizations, including the
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Speaker 2: Greeks and the Romans. It was achieved this shape that
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Speaker 2: you've mentioned, Ben, by stuffing minced meat meats of various
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Speaker 2: origins into animal intestines. That's the casing the snappy bit
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Speaker 2: on the outside. And nobody likes to think of that, No, Adam,
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Speaker 2: I don't really care. I think we you and I
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Speaker 2: all both we'll eat it. We'll eat a gut from
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Speaker 2: time to time. Mm hm Yeah, I like a little
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Speaker 2: tripe in my in my fa And you know, this
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Speaker 2: was a way of creating a longer shelf life for
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Speaker 2: the meat in question by stuffing it inside this kind
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Speaker 2: of edible pouch.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because think about it, folks, you've you've got the
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Speaker 1: animal that you've already slaughtered, right, your sheep, your goat,
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Speaker 1: your pig, your cow, et cetera. And you have the
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Speaker 1: food that is prized, right, the protein you would eat,
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Speaker 1: but then you're thinking, how do I get all this
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Speaker 1: back in one place? And so it makes sense that
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Speaker 1: you would have the intestines and look at them and say, oh,
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Speaker 1: I can the guiver a perfect package here.
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Speaker 2: A perfect package. Indeed, Ben, no, you nailed it. And actually,
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Speaker 2: if you're looking for some other sausage related episodes of
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Speaker 2: Ridiculous Sisty, we got two that come to mind. One place,
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Speaker 2: Richard Blaze, for sure, that was more bacon oriented. Well, no,
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Speaker 2: it wasn't a bacon versus sausage. That's true in his
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Speaker 2: episode of Food Court that you and I did. But
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Speaker 2: we also did an episode pretty early in the history
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Speaker 2: of this show about botox, the vacullinium toxin that was
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Speaker 2: derived from spoiled sausages, and also about sausage intestine type
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Speaker 2: casings used to create early Zeppelins. And you can find
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Speaker 2: both of those in the feed. But we are talking
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Speaker 2: specifically about that aha moment that usually comes along with
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Speaker 2: an oopsie of some sort, right, yeah, yeah, the aha oopsie,
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Speaker 2: and this in this case, it happened at the behest
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Speaker 2: of the Roman emperor Nero, whose chef goes by the
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Speaker 2: name of Gaius, may have accidentally stumbled upon the method
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Speaker 2: of creating a casing out of animal guts. God, this is,
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Speaker 2: you know, a legendary myth kind of thing. But Guias was,
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Speaker 2: you know, overseeing his kitchen, was preparing these roasted pigs
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Speaker 2: for some sort of you know, presumably debauched bacchanalia.
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Speaker 1: And they were supposed to be starved for a whole
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Speaker 1: week before they're killed.
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Speaker 2: Right. I didn't know this. No, I didn't know that either, Ben,
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Speaker 2: And that that is I guess a way of I
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Speaker 2: guess is that sort of like a veal, It makes
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Speaker 2: the meat more delicate or something. I don't know.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it's we've all eaten Chiplin's before. Maybe it's a
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Speaker 1: matter of hygiene.
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Speaker 2: Could well be Ben, But as the legend goes, Guyas was,
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Speaker 2: you know, overseeing his kitchen. And by the way, fabulous
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Speaker 2: article from history dot com, the Extra Long History of
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Speaker 2: the hot Dog that I'm pulling some of this information from.
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Speaker 2: Very clever. We love our writers. Over your history. Stephanie
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Speaker 2: Butler wrote this one from ancient Roman sausage to Nathan's
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Speaker 2: Coney Island hot Dog, The history of tubular meat may
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Speaker 2: stretch back millennia, she writes. So god Bias was overseeing
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Speaker 2: the preparation of these starved animals, and one of them,
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Speaker 2: it would seem, was roasted without being cleaned. So, in
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Speaker 2: other words, all of the offal and the stuff that
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Speaker 2: you know inside the cavity had not been pulled out
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Speaker 2: as customarily would be the case before roasting them. And
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Speaker 2: when he popped the thing open, outspilled a cornucopia of
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Speaker 2: gutty parts.
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Speaker 1: M Yeah, this guyas we could only imagine, encounters something
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Speaker 1: like when you open a package that's been delivered and
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Speaker 1: you see all the little puffs of air, right, the
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Speaker 1: plastic air puffying or the styrofoam or what have you.
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Speaker 1: He sees all this packaging essentially, and because the intestines
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Speaker 1: are empty, as the pig had been starved for a week,
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Speaker 1: and because they are puffed up from the heat, they
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Speaker 1: clearly look like contators. And he has this light bulb
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Speaker 1: moment way before light bulbs are invented, where he apocryphally exclaims,
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Speaker 1: I have discovered something of great importance. And so he's
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Speaker 1: got a bunch of like wheat and spices, right, because
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Speaker 1: he's top dog chef.
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Speaker 2: So he.
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Speaker 1: I'm laughing because he literally stuffs the intestines with this
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Speaker 1: minced meat and the spices and this wheat as filler.
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Speaker 2: Is it twisted or genius or geniusly twisted.
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Speaker 1: I think it's both, man.
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Speaker 2: I think it really is. I mean, it's the kind
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Speaker 2: of story we always hear when it comes to like
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Speaker 2: the first person that figured out how to eat the
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Speaker 2: snotty insides of a crustacean and then found it to
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Speaker 2: be delectable, or the mushrooms that you know killed you
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Speaker 2: are made just see crazy stuff until you found the
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Speaker 2: one that just tasted.
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Speaker 1: Nice, right right. And we do know thanks to hotdog
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Speaker 1: dot org. Hot dash dog dot.
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Speaker 2: Love that that exists, as we typically do with these
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Speaker 2: very specific orgs. I love the Internet, man.
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Speaker 1: What we learned from our friends over at hot dashdog
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Speaker 1: dot org is that sausage is indeed one of the
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Speaker 1: oldest forms of processed food. It's even mentioned in the
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Speaker 1: Odyssey by Homer not Honda, dating back to ninth century BCE.
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Speaker 2: Ben, have you heard a lot of this kerfuffle that's
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Speaker 2: being made about the Christopher Nolan Odyssey coming out?
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Speaker 1: Dude, I was just reading about some of that, people
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Speaker 1: seem to be skeptical. I think there was a trailer release,
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Speaker 1: but I'm a sucker for a good a good piece
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Speaker 1: of mythology.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I love a sword and sandals kind of thing.
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Speaker 2: But I think the issue is that Nolan is pretty
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Speaker 2: you know, infamous for being a stickler for details, for
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Speaker 2: like historical details, and he has you know, said as
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Speaker 2: much about this project in his press runs. But it's
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Speaker 2: my understanding that there is not anyone of note that
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Speaker 2: is of Greek lineage that has been cast in the film.
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Speaker 2: And also there are some questions about like the type
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Speaker 2: of bronze, whether they could have like bronze that was
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Speaker 2: made to appear jet black, whether that was a process
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Speaker 2: that was even popular at the time. So there's some
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Speaker 2: people that are getting a little up in arms about it,
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Speaker 2: but it is true, and you gotta wonder are sausage
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Speaker 2: is featured in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, spoiler folks, we suspect that's the main plot,
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Speaker 1: because one would hope we've actually read the Odyssey.
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Speaker 2: It's actually a sequel to seth Rogen's Sausage Party. Absolutely
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Speaker 2: yet so. But speaking of spoilers, the whole idea here,
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Speaker 2: and this idea of it being a processed food is
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Speaker 2: to again extend the shelf life. But this early version
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Speaker 2: it was really just kind of creating sort of an
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Speaker 2: air tight package. Like you said, it wasn't until layed
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Speaker 2: or that more preservatives would be used, and that it
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Speaker 2: truly would be a much more processed food as we
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Speaker 2: know those today nitrates and things like that.
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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Max, give us some sweeping civilization esque music
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Speaker 1: to portray the passing of time?
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Speaker 2: Do perf? How goes SIEV music? Do you build it?
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Speaker 2: We're belding so so sim music at least according to
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Speaker 2: step six. It's actually what it does is it combines
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Speaker 2: music of all the different civilizations you have met in
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Speaker 2: the game. Oh oh, and that reminds me Max really quickly.
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Speaker 2: Just and I know this isn't exactly on topic, but
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Speaker 2: jumping back to Christopher Nolans the Odyssey, another thing that
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Speaker 2: he said, and it sort of contradicts a lot of
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Speaker 2: his other choices, is that they didn't have orchestras back then,
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Speaker 2: so he wanted the score to be ented they wanted
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Speaker 2: he wanted the score to be entirely orchestra free. So uh,
11:53
Speaker 2: Ludwig van Gorenson. I think we both love it for
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Speaker 2: his production work with Childish Gambino, and also he's just
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Speaker 2: really become kind of the it composer in Hollywood. He
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Speaker 2: apparently made the entire score using only gongs, various sizes
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Speaker 2: of gongs, but then he just kind of slipped in
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Speaker 2: the fact that he also ran them through modular synthesizers
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Speaker 2: and which definitely didn't exist either.
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Speaker 1: And hit the gongs with big old wingers. Yeah, because
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Speaker 1: we're adults, we can so Max, thank you again for that.
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Speaker 2: Sort We squandered that sweeping time change music.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, here we are over time. Centuries and centuries happen,
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Speaker 1: empires rise and full, but food remains a constant right
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Speaker 1: because it's a universal need of people. Sure, so different
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Speaker 1: regions of Europe are figuring out what d rose Chef
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Speaker 1: apparently called later. We suspect Nolan and I suspect this
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Speaker 1: was a lot of parallel thinking. As you always like
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Speaker 1: to say, Nol, but you gotta face it. We go
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Speaker 1: to Germany fairly often. Noel goes more often than I do,
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Speaker 1: but Germany's very famous or sausages, like if you walk
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Speaker 1: into a German butcher shop. I'm confused by how many
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Speaker 1: types of sausage exists.
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Speaker 2: Well, the word wiener, you know, is derived from the
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Speaker 2: region of Germany called Vienna or Veen, and that is
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Speaker 2: where the term wiener comes from. Another you know, interchangeable,
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Speaker 2: at least the way it's come to be today. Frankfurture
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Speaker 2: comes from another city in Germany called Frankfurt, and they
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Speaker 2: claim that their sausage tradition dates as far back as
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Speaker 2: the Middle Ages. There are some local historians that trace
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Speaker 2: Frankfurt is back to the thirteenth century, but Vienna also
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Speaker 2: claims to have had a significant hand in the creation
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Speaker 2: of the sausage made from a mixture of pork and
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Speaker 2: beef that resembles much more closely than what Gaius was
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Speaker 2: up to the modern hot dog, and even the term
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Speaker 2: hot dog, as we'll get to its origin is a
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Speaker 2: German dog. So Frankfurt, as it's known in Germany, Mine
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Speaker 2: the mine being a river, is traditionally credited with originating
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Speaker 2: the Frankfurter, but the claim is disputed by a lot
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Speaker 2: of folks that do seem to believe that the sausage
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Speaker 2: known as the dochsundt dot that means the little Dog
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Speaker 2: sausage was created in the sixteen hundreds by a guy
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Speaker 2: named Johann Jorg Henner, who was a butcher who lived
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Speaker 2: in Coburg. Didn't Coburg, No, No, that's Cherniberg. We were
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Speaker 2: talking about fin France, and I believe that's in Saxony.
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Speaker 2: We were talking about d Day the other day, So
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Speaker 2: I'm interchanging these things. Coburg is in Germany, and according
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Speaker 2: to a report cited by Hotdashdog dot Org, he later
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Speaker 2: traveled to Frankfurt in order to promote his product that
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Speaker 2: he had in fact already created in Cobra. But you
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Speaker 2: know what, man, a lot of these like origin stories,
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Speaker 2: it's less about where someone was geographically when they made
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Speaker 2: the thing and more about where it took off.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and where humans began telling the story to each other. Uh,
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Speaker 1: there's a There are some phenomenal authors who wrestle with
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Speaker 1: these same questions. One of my favorites is a guy
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Speaker 1: named Mark Kurlansky, who wrote a book entirely about salt
15:40
Speaker 1: and It's Cold. In a burst of creativity, can you
15:43
Speaker 1: guess salt?
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Speaker 2: You nailed it? The book, the ride, the movie. It's
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Speaker 2: a Paige Sturder.
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Speaker 1: I can't believe it's a novel thing about salt.
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Speaker 2: Well, salt is is it's that's that is civilization though, right, like,
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Speaker 2: there's so much and you could argue the same thing
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Speaker 2: about hot dogs. And ben a colleague of ours, Jamie Loftis,
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Speaker 2: who does incredible podcast stuff and other things like stand
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Speaker 2: up and she's a playwright and just and an author,
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Speaker 2: wrote an entire book about hot dogs.
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Speaker 1: She did, yes, and we have read it and it's
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Speaker 1: pretty awesome, to be honest. We're not blowing rainbows, we're
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Speaker 1: not blowing sausage links, but we we this earl that's
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Speaker 1: a little too evocative, but we can tell you that
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Speaker 1: based on the work of folks like Kurlansky and hotdashdog
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Speaker 1: dot Org and Loftus, we understand that the history of food,
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Speaker 1: especially when you get really far back, usually doesn't have
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Speaker 1: a lot of paperwork. It's not very well documented, like
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Speaker 1: who's the first person who figured out to put salt
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Speaker 1: on something? You know what I mean? Or to your
16:58
Speaker 1: point about mushrooms as well, we generally will see that
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Speaker 1: the modern you know, Hebrew national that you might buy
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Speaker 1: in a grocery store today comes from Central European sausage
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Speaker 1: traditions that are parallel. Thinking multiple folks figured this out.
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Speaker 1: There's not one hot dog messiah.
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Speaker 2: Ooh, but I love the concept of a hot dog messiah.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: It's not the messiah that we wanted, but it's the
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Speaker 2: one that we deserve.
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Speaker 1: Could you please change this water into wide No, but
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Speaker 1: how do you feel about the hot links.
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Speaker 2: Hot dog water? Hot dog water. I'll take your water
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Speaker 2: and I'll some awesome dogs in it, and magically it
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Speaker 2: transmutes into hot dog water. The idea of sausage links
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Speaker 2: to is interesting because if you really see traditional the
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Speaker 2: way sausages are made. I love the concept too, of
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Speaker 2: how the sausage is made, the implication being some gross
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Speaker 2: that you don't want to know about. You take the
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Speaker 2: casings and you stuff them, and then you twist them,
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Speaker 2: and that's how you get all these like bangers that
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Speaker 2: are like joined together, and you can like toss them
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Speaker 2: over your shoulder. Great way to make them even more portable.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I've never bought or I've
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Speaker 1: never purchased one of those chain links of sausages or
18:24
Speaker 1: hot dogs when I when you don't see them as
18:27
Speaker 1: often that much anymore, not.
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Speaker 2: In the States, unless you go to a cool ass butcher, like,
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Speaker 2: we're so lucky to have spotted trotter. In Germany, though,
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Speaker 2: you can go to any corner butcher and they will
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Speaker 2: have like a little glass dome with like sausage linked
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Speaker 2: up kind of more dry, you know, meant to be
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Speaker 2: eaten on the go as a snack. And you can
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Speaker 2: buy like four or five of them linked together for nothing.
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Speaker 2: And they're so good man, they really do know how
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Speaker 2: to do do sausages there in Germany.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and thankfully a lot of German nationals immigrated to
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Speaker 1: the United States. This is part of the story of
19:07
Speaker 1: the hot dog, right, because.
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Speaker 2: That's why it's the story of immigration. Is the story
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Speaker 2: of this country, like so many food products, and the
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Speaker 2: tracking the lineage of them is in and of itself
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Speaker 2: a story of the movement of people. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Now, as we said earlier, the Frankfurter is commonly thought
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Speaker 1: to be developed in Frankfurt in fourteen eighty seven. As
19:33
Speaker 1: you said, Noels, so it way predates the United States.
19:37
Speaker 1: We had our hilarious conversation.
19:40
Speaker 2: About the term weener. I am an.
19:42
Speaker 1: Adult, I can vote. It looks like the North American
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Speaker 1: hot dog, the kind of Hebrew national elite today comes
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Speaker 1: from this European sausage that was brought here by butchers
19:57
Speaker 1: and various immigrants from throughout Europe.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the North American as we know it, the indigenous
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Speaker 2: North American hot dog, comes from this European sausage that
20:12
Speaker 2: we've been talking about, brought here by those folks that
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Speaker 2: you mentioned. However, the big question remains, we know where
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Speaker 2: the sausage came from, but where did the bun come from?
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Speaker 2: And then who came up with the idea of sticking
20:26
Speaker 2: them together. As you can imagine, we do have some
20:29
Speaker 2: alternate theories as to how that went down.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, think about it this way, folks. She got German immigrants, butchers, salespeople.
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Speaker 1: They're going to urban centers like New York City, Chicago,
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Speaker 1: Saint Louis, Cincinnati, and they're selling street food basically.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: And before we get to the bun, we've got to
20:52
Speaker 1: mention the Colombian Exposition of eighteen ninety three. This is
20:56
Speaker 1: where a bunch of people get together and Chicago.
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Speaker 2: It's a big to do.
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Speaker 1: If you ever get the chance to go to a
21:04
Speaker 1: World's Fair or an exposition, please do visit. There are
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Speaker 1: thousands of folks who are discovering new kinds of food,
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Speaker 1: and they're seeing all these hot dogs, these sausages. This
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Speaker 1: is where you do a lovely bit in the research
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Speaker 1: stool and you point out there is a hot dog
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Speaker 1: historian named Bruce Craig, a PhD historian in hot dogs
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Speaker 1: at Roosevelt University, and he says, look, the German manner
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Speaker 1: was to always eat these docks and or little dog
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Speaker 1: sausages with bread.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, as is the case today. I mean, if you
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Speaker 2: go to Germany, you're not gonna typically see a you know,
21:48
Speaker 2: a traditional hot diligible, but no, it's gonna be bavos,
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Speaker 2: midwot or buchin, which are like these little breads and
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Speaker 2: that you could cut it and then stick the dog
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Speaker 2: in side or literally just put the dog on top
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Speaker 2: and you put the mustard on the dog. But it's
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Speaker 2: not really a bun. And Germans are they love their bread.
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Speaker 2: They're very particular, very particular about their bread, as of
22:13
Speaker 2: course the French are as well. So the question then
22:16
Speaker 2: becomes like, you know, sure the Germans were probably eating
22:20
Speaker 2: their you know, sausages with bread since time immemorial, or
22:24
Speaker 2: since the sausages kind of were around. But that's not
22:27
Speaker 2: necessarily the same thing as the like elongated split traditional
22:31
Speaker 2: americanized hot dog, buton that we see at baseball games.
22:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, for that we have to go to an historical debate.
22:41
Speaker 1: So a lot of hot dog boffins are going to say, hey,
22:47
Speaker 1: there's a story that isn't true. This is the story
22:51
Speaker 1: that historians hate. The story goes, or the legend we
22:55
Speaker 1: could call it, is that in nineteen oh four there
22:59
Speaker 1: was a Bavarian street vendor we could call them, named
23:05
Speaker 1: Anton Futswangler, and he was at the Saint Louis, Louisiana
23:09
Speaker 1: Purchase Exposition. So apparently, again according to the legend, he
23:17
Speaker 1: he is selling these very hot, fresh baked sausages and
23:21
Speaker 1: he gives his customers these cheap white gloves so that
23:27
Speaker 1: they don't burn their hands while they're fing Yeah, they
23:30
Speaker 1: don't burn their fingies. And he realizes, hey, I can't
23:35
Speaker 1: trust all these strangers. I'm giving these people these gloves
23:39
Speaker 1: as alone, but they're not giving them back.
23:42
Speaker 2: They're just away. You don't give away a thing expecting
23:46
Speaker 2: to get it back unless you take a deposit. I mean,
23:49
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. This thing screams of apocryphal.
23:52
Speaker 1: One hundred percent and So he goes to his brother
23:55
Speaker 1: in law, a guy who is a baker, and he says, hey, man,
23:59
Speaker 1: can you you bake gloves?
24:02
Speaker 2: Helps me out? I'm out of white.
24:04
Speaker 1: Gloves, right, And so the baker looks at the sausage,
24:08
Speaker 1: looks at his brother in law, loves the guy and
24:12
Speaker 1: doesn't want him to fail, and we can only imagine
24:16
Speaker 1: he had some leftover materials. That's where, according to this
24:21
Speaker 1: kind of malarkey story, we find the long soft rolls
24:26
Speaker 1: that seem custom tailored to fit the hot dog.
24:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sadly, though, there is still that discrepancy of hot
24:33
Speaker 2: dogs coming in a certain number and buns coming in Yeah. Yeah.
24:38
Speaker 2: I'll never forget that scene from Father of the Bride
24:41
Speaker 2: with Steve Martin where he freaks out and rips the
24:45
Speaker 2: package open and takes only the number of buns that
24:48
Speaker 2: he wants and the guy's like, you can't do that.
24:49
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm making a stand. I can relate, man,
24:53
Speaker 2: but you gotta you know, these people don't get paid
24:56
Speaker 2: enough to deal with your craziness in the in the
24:58
Speaker 2: grocery store.
24:59
Speaker 1: Steve Martin exactly, Steve who is by the way, did
25:03
Speaker 1: you know Steve Martin is one of the best banjo
25:06
Speaker 1: players on the planet.
25:07
Speaker 2: He knows how to pluck at a banjo.
25:10
Speaker 1: I was surprised.
25:11
Speaker 2: I've been playing for a very long time. He incorporated
25:14
Speaker 2: into a lot of his early stand up and he
25:16
Speaker 2: really truly is. I think it's They're called like the
25:19
Speaker 2: Steep Canyon Rangers, I believe is the name of this group,
25:22
Speaker 2: and it's not a comedy group. It is just an
25:24
Speaker 2: absolute top notch bluegrass outfit. Yeah.
25:26
Speaker 1: You go into Steve Martin experience and you think I'm
25:30
Speaker 1: gonna see some amazing stand up, and then part way
25:34
Speaker 1: through you go, oh, this guy is just actually amazing
25:37
Speaker 1: at the banjo.
25:37
Speaker 2: This guy can shred, this guy shreads.
25:40
Speaker 1: What we do know here is that sausages were phenomenal
25:46
Speaker 1: in the American sphere, Like there was a great appetite
25:49
Speaker 1: for it. So by the late eighteen hundreds, you can
25:54
Speaker 1: already see a sausage something that doesn't quite look like
25:59
Speaker 1: your hot dog today in a long rowle, and it's
26:02
Speaker 1: being served and sold in multiple US cities, especially on
26:07
Speaker 1: the East Coast, which I think gives us a clue
26:11
Speaker 1: about immigration and innovation.
26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we also it also gives us a clue
26:16
Speaker 2: about that historical game of telephone, you know that you're
26:19
Speaker 2: always talking about Ben. There's another hot dog apocryphal hot
26:25
Speaker 2: dog story, origin story that historians kind of you know,
26:29
Speaker 2: turn their noses up at. Some believe that the term
26:33
Speaker 2: was coined in nineteen oh one at an event that
26:35
Speaker 2: took place on the New York Polo Grounds on a
26:39
Speaker 2: frigid April day, where vendors were selling the dogs that were,
26:44
Speaker 2: you know, being kept warm in hot water tanks and
26:48
Speaker 2: shouting out their slogans something along the lines of get
26:51
Speaker 2: them while they're hot, you know, get your docsun sausages, Well,
26:55
Speaker 2: they're red hot, and red hots is another name for
26:57
Speaker 2: a type of sausage. And apparently, as the story goes,
27:01
Speaker 2: a cartoonist named Ted Dorgan from the New York Journal
27:05
Speaker 2: saw the you know, the kerfuffle, the delicious kerfuffle, and
27:10
Speaker 2: decided he to draw a little cartoon to commemorate this
27:13
Speaker 2: historical moment, wherein he kind of anthropomorphized the hot dogs
27:18
Speaker 2: and made them into little barking docs and sausages hanging
27:21
Speaker 2: out in these little buns. He didn't know how to
27:24
Speaker 2: spell the word, as the story goes, so he wrote
27:27
Speaker 2: hot dog instead of Docson and apparently, you know again,
27:32
Speaker 2: as the tale goes, that the cartoon was a big
27:34
Speaker 2: hit and the term hot dog took off from there.
27:38
Speaker 2: But this particular cartoon seems to be lost to history,
27:41
Speaker 2: if it ever existed in the first place. So yeah,
27:45
Speaker 2: there's definitely a huge body of work by this particular cartoonist,
27:49
Speaker 2: but this does not seem to be among it. So yeah,
27:53
Speaker 2: the historians seem to believe that that one's another one
27:55
Speaker 2: that's kind of been you know, largely exaggerated, if not
27:57
Speaker 2: entirely trumped up.
27:59
Speaker 1: I love it though, especially because we skipped a bit
28:02
Speaker 1: of lunch today to record, so I'm super into hot
28:06
Speaker 1: dog history. We're gonna make some hot dogs here in
28:10
Speaker 1: the home studio after this. We also one thing I
28:14
Speaker 1: love that you found here is that the easiest way
28:19
Speaker 1: to figure out when something becomes a thing is to
28:24
Speaker 1: look back into printed material. This is why Craig and
28:29
Speaker 1: other culinary historians hot dog boffins. This is why they
28:34
Speaker 1: spend so much time digging through history for the first
28:39
Speaker 1: printed instance of the phrase hot dog. They see it
28:44
Speaker 1: again in the late nineteenth century. In the eighteen nineties,
28:49
Speaker 1: it was used at Yale in eighteen ninety four, specifically
28:55
Speaker 1: referring to something called dog wagons, which speak.
28:59
Speaker 2: Of like a pro food truck or like an ice
29:01
Speaker 2: cream you know what do you call it? Like a
29:04
Speaker 2: little pushcart. But instead of selling you know, cold treat,
29:08
Speaker 2: you're selling hot dogs. And this is something that would
29:10
Speaker 2: go around to the different dormitories, and the name kind
29:13
Speaker 2: of became a bit of a regional in joke, not
29:17
Speaker 2: a compliment, not a compliment again, how the sausage was
29:20
Speaker 2: made there, it did become a question as to whether
29:24
Speaker 2: or not, you know, these kind of mystery meats contained
29:29
Speaker 2: some things that maybe would not be particularly culturally appropriate
29:35
Speaker 2: to eat.
29:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do check out our earlier episode on the
29:40
Speaker 1: amazing growth of Chinese restaurants in the United States and
29:45
Speaker 1: the racism those folks had to had to overcome. So
29:49
Speaker 1: we know, a hot dog was definitely derived from some
29:55
Speaker 1: perspective about German immigration.
29:57
Speaker 2: It was also definitely a compliment all the time.
30:02
Speaker 1: But there is one reason beside convenience that made the
30:08
Speaker 1: hot dog an American staple. Dare we say, an icon
30:12
Speaker 1: up there with apple pie this one and cracker jacks
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And seventh, any stretches This one
30:20
Speaker 1: is for our own Max Williams. The hot dog owes
30:25
Speaker 1: its success to baseball.
30:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, as baseball became America's pastime, the hot dog became
30:39
Speaker 2: inextricably linked with the sport. The spectacle. There you go of,
30:44
Speaker 2: you know, attending the old, the old ballgame. So Smithsonian
30:48
Speaker 2: mag has a delightful piece by Donald Dale Jackson called
30:52
Speaker 2: hot Dogs are Us. It's no stretch to say they're
30:56
Speaker 2: more American then, as you said, Ben apple Pie, because
30:59
Speaker 2: they lay us together. Everyone's going to be making that joke.
31:01
Speaker 2: It's simple. Oh yeah, I didn't even do it on purpose.
31:04
Speaker 2: It just this hat and he had this to say.
31:09
Speaker 2: They were Americanized through their association with public events. According
31:12
Speaker 2: to a person who spoke to the author for this
31:16
Speaker 2: piece named Bruce Craig, people ate them at baseball games,
31:19
Speaker 2: horse races, fairs, and circuses. Today America is hot dog
31:24
Speaker 2: HQ with rival styles regional specificities in terms of what
31:30
Speaker 2: what does the hot dog make from places like New
31:33
Speaker 2: York and Chicago. There's even a Seattle dog we'll get
31:36
Speaker 2: to in a little bit, and it is a bit
31:38
Speaker 2: of a source of some good natured beef. Haha. Gosh,
31:44
Speaker 2: you just walk right into all of them. New Yorkers
31:46
Speaker 2: would say that Chicago dogs are you know, way overkill
31:51
Speaker 2: unga patchka, as my buddy Wigs would say on the
31:54
Speaker 2: dough Boys podcast putting a hat on a hat In Chicago,
31:57
Speaker 2: they would say they put an entire salad over the
32:00
Speaker 2: dog because they're embarrassed at the way it tastes. I
32:04
Speaker 2: love a Chicago dog. You know who else loves the
32:06
Speaker 2: Chicago dog.
32:08
Speaker 1: People from Chicago, People from Chicago.
32:10
Speaker 2: But Anthony Anthony Bourdain. Oh yeah, it is a real
32:13
Speaker 2: evangelist for the Chicago dog. And I will die on
32:16
Speaker 2: that hill. I think it is the superior dog. It
32:19
Speaker 2: is true, it is true. Don't necessarily like the full
32:22
Speaker 2: pickle spear on it, but everything else is good on me.
32:26
Speaker 2: And we'll get to some of these different.
32:28
Speaker 1: Weird rules about condiments, I hope, uh huh oh definitely yeah,
32:32
Speaker 1: no catchup allowed on a Chicago dog, let's see.
32:36
Speaker 2: But A guide to Chicago fast food bad mouths the
32:40
Speaker 2: New York Dogs from Smithsonian, again referring to as this
32:44
Speaker 2: is tough, guys, but I'm gonna get through it. A
32:46
Speaker 2: little limp Wiener drowning in gloppy stewed onions and sour crowd.
32:53
Speaker 2: What a fair I don't know, man, some of those
32:56
Speaker 2: street hot dogs in New York are not great. Well
32:59
Speaker 2: what do you expect.
33:00
Speaker 1: It's like, it's how much good a padana costs?
33:03
Speaker 2: Michael. That's a very good question, Ben. But I will
33:05
Speaker 2: say there are other forms of street meat that are superior, like,
33:09
Speaker 2: you know, absolutely a little bit of chicken and rice.
33:12
Speaker 2: You know, I love a hala bowl.
33:16
Speaker 1: You know.
33:16
Speaker 2: It just seems like some of the hot dog vendors
33:18
Speaker 2: are phoning in it. Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
33:21
Speaker 1: In some cases, I'll say it, they're clearly laundering money.
33:27
Speaker 2: But but I was like, it's like the pizza places.
33:30
Speaker 2: It's like the pizza places. Uh, and Ben, you'll be
33:33
Speaker 2: thrilled to know, and Max as well, that Pizza Hut
33:37
Speaker 2: is bringing back the classic Pizza Hut experience. It's our
33:41
Speaker 2: youth and one of them is going to be in
33:44
Speaker 2: Blue Ridge, which is not too far. We have to
33:46
Speaker 2: be we are I want to go.
33:48
Speaker 1: We have to go together.
33:49
Speaker 2: I really want to go. And it's it's such a
33:51
Speaker 2: good excuse to go for a lovely little, you know
33:53
Speaker 2: day in the mountains and in a classic pizza hut,
33:56
Speaker 2: pizza parts, those red cups, those red plastic cus in
34:00
Speaker 2: the stained glass little table overhang.
34:04
Speaker 1: We could play a pickup game of basketball with kids,
34:09
Speaker 1: or demolish a little league team. They go back to celebrate.
34:13
Speaker 1: That's awesome, that's great news, and that's quinte essentially American.
34:18
Speaker 1: We should do a history of pizza hut one day.
34:20
Speaker 1: But we know that the hot dog now is if
34:25
Speaker 1: you're not from the States, you are familiar with the
34:28
Speaker 1: American modern version of the hot dog because you see
34:32
Speaker 1: it in countless TV shows and countless gosh, even reality
34:38
Speaker 1: TV or films. They're associated with picnics and cookouts and
34:43
Speaker 1: definitely baseball games. We know that they've even become a
34:49
Speaker 1: tool of diplomacy because back when we had FDR as
34:54
Speaker 1: a president in nineteen thirty nine, he made international headline
35:00
Speaker 1: because George the sixth, the guy from Britain from earlier
35:05
Speaker 1: the King, visited the US and the White House chef
35:09
Speaker 1: was like, hey, President Roosevelt, what should we serve this
35:15
Speaker 1: visiting royalty, And without missing a beat, all FDR said,
35:20
Speaker 1: give him hot dogs.
35:21
Speaker 2: Give him hot dogs. Yeah, that's true. It's like Trump
35:25
Speaker 2: would probably make it big Max. You know, at this
35:30
Speaker 2: point he was kind of trying to spread the word
35:33
Speaker 2: sort of the way that remember in the Potato episode,
35:36
Speaker 2: they were serving potatoes to foreign dignitaries and using potatoes
35:40
Speaker 2: as you know, the main ingredient in a lot of
35:43
Speaker 2: like state dinners, and it was a way of spreading
35:46
Speaker 2: the word of the potato. Yeah.
35:49
Speaker 1: And some of the more high faluting, like the Boston
35:54
Speaker 1: Brahmins or the blue blood New Yorkers in the crowd,
35:57
Speaker 1: some of them said that Velt was screwing up because
36:03
Speaker 1: he was serving street food to the literal king of
36:07
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. But word on the street changed once
36:12
Speaker 1: the public learned King George had a hot dog politely
36:20
Speaker 1: and then he had a second hot dog. He was
36:22
Speaker 1: housing these dogs.
36:24
Speaker 2: He was housing those dogs, man, just shoveling them down. Uh.
36:27
Speaker 2: And you know it's just it's kind of the everyman food. Yeah.
36:33
Speaker 1: Walking while you're eating it. You can hold it with
36:36
Speaker 1: one hand, you know, you got your other hand for
36:39
Speaker 1: your soda or whatever.
36:40
Speaker 2: I don't suck it out of your sleeve because it'll
36:42
Speaker 2: get lies in your throat and then you need a
36:44
Speaker 2: special vacuum cleaner to suck it out.
36:47
Speaker 1: Skip lunch I'm getting so hungry thinking about this. We
36:51
Speaker 1: do have to mention, of course, uh nol, as you
36:54
Speaker 1: point out here, we do have to mention a titular milestone,
37:00
Speaker 1: watershed moment in the history of the hot dog, that
37:03
Speaker 1: is Nathan's famous and Cody Island.
37:07
Speaker 2: Right in nineteen sixteen, Nathan Handworker opened what you just mentioned,
37:13
Speaker 2: his first hot dog stand. He sold hot dogs at
37:17
Speaker 2: a bargain price that he, you know, was able to
37:19
Speaker 2: undercut all his competitors, helping further establish them as a
37:24
Speaker 2: kind of you know, universal food of the people. His
37:27
Speaker 2: stand began to amass acclaim far and wide and really
37:32
Speaker 2: helped popularize the hot dog outside of just the boroughs
37:36
Speaker 2: of New York. Not to mention, of course, Nathan's famous
37:42
Speaker 2: hot dog eating contest that later turned the hot dog
37:44
Speaker 2: into a symbol of this bizarre to me anyway, sports
37:50
Speaker 2: as well as American popular culture, and the hot dog
37:53
Speaker 2: eating contest that happens at Coney Island every year is
37:56
Speaker 2: still you know, hugely popular.
37:58
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I went down a huge rabbit hole about
38:03
Speaker 1: this for several years before we even started Ridiculous History.
38:08
Speaker 2: It's it's such.
38:09
Speaker 1: A bizarre and thoroughly American pastime. I'm not sure if
38:14
Speaker 1: we could call it a sport, but competitive eating does
38:18
Speaker 1: have all the ingredients of a sport.
38:21
Speaker 2: And also these people that are the best at it
38:23
Speaker 2: aren't like big, you know, gluttonous talking. I'm talking yep,
38:30
Speaker 2: for sure. It really did. The hot dog eating sports
38:36
Speaker 2: took on a bit more kind of cachet or gravitas
38:41
Speaker 2: when Takuru Kobayashi won the Nathan's Contest in two thousand
38:45
Speaker 2: and one, eating fifty hot dogs in only twelve minutes,
38:48
Speaker 2: roughly doubling the previous winning totals. And you might have
38:53
Speaker 2: heard of some of these techniques. This is not again
38:56
Speaker 2: just glutton the stuff. There's there's strategy here. Some of
38:59
Speaker 2: his techniques that he more or less invented, I guess,
39:02
Speaker 2: separating the dogs and the buns and soaking it's not appetizing,
39:06
Speaker 2: by the way, soaking the buns in water. It really
39:09
Speaker 2: did give this event much more of a sense of
39:14
Speaker 2: you know, competitive edge and you know skill, rather than
39:19
Speaker 2: being a little bit more like, you know, who was
39:21
Speaker 2: the fattest fat boy on the block? Right right, who's
39:25
Speaker 2: the biggest piggy.
39:26
Speaker 1: It's it's not that it's uh, there is something.
39:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, r yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
39:33
Speaker 1: I have to mention this as a student of the game.
39:37
Speaker 1: During Kolbiyashi's halsey odd years, during the height of his fame,
39:42
Speaker 1: he was studied by doctors who found this is you know,
39:48
Speaker 1: the scuttle butt.
39:49
Speaker 2: They found that he had a.
39:52
Speaker 1: Mutation of sorts. His stomach was not constrained by his
39:58
Speaker 1: rib cage, so and under it, providing more area of absorption.
40:05
Speaker 1: At least that's the legend. There are a bunch of
40:08
Speaker 1: legends about competitive eating. Shout out to Sonya the Black Widow, Thomas,
40:14
Speaker 1: shout out to, of course Joey Chestnut, which already sounds
40:18
Speaker 1: like a made up name.
40:19
Speaker 2: It it really does. These folks must have had like
40:21
Speaker 2: the metabolisms of hummingbirds. In two thousand and seven, Joey
40:25
Speaker 2: Chestnut dethroned Kobayashi and began, you know, absolutely dominating in
40:32
Speaker 2: It's referred to in some of the sources I'm reading
40:34
Speaker 2: as the most dominant runs in sports periods. He won
40:39
Speaker 2: Jordan of it. He really is. He won the contest
40:42
Speaker 2: numerous times and set a record of seventy six hot
40:44
Speaker 2: dogs and buns in ten minutes in twenty twenty one,
40:47
Speaker 2: not too terribly long ago. His rivalry with Kobyashi is
40:51
Speaker 2: really a big you know again sports beef that gave
40:57
Speaker 2: competitive eating much more of a mainstream quality.
41:00
Speaker 1: And you can watch it with us live very soon
41:05
Speaker 1: next month, less than a month away. I'm getting too
41:08
Speaker 1: excited about it.
41:08
Speaker 2: It's fine. We have the hot dog contest. I've never
41:13
Speaker 2: watched it. I'm really glad that you mentioned that, Ben.
41:16
Speaker 2: I'm sure it is, but I'm at least morbidly curious. Yeah.
41:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you will scratch that itch, Noel, because it's
41:26
Speaker 1: when they go to town. They certainly go to town. I
41:28
Speaker 1: want to go back to one of those stats you mentioned.
41:32
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine eating seventy six hot dogs in a series,
41:40
Speaker 1: no matter how much time I have.
41:42
Speaker 2: No ten minutes. Four is too much. Four is too many.
41:46
Speaker 2: Four is too many. I will say though, hot dogs
41:49
Speaker 2: two is they should come in. I do like if
41:51
Speaker 2: I'm eating them at home, I'll always make two, Always
41:53
Speaker 2: make two. Yeah. Remember that scene in Weapons where they
41:56
Speaker 2: have like ten like it was the time I started
42:00
Speaker 2: reading about. When that movie came out, people were talking about, like,
42:02
Speaker 2: what's up with the hot dog scene? And apparently it's
42:05
Speaker 2: a reference to the Whitest Kids you know sketch which
42:09
Speaker 2: Zach Craigor was a member of that crew. We have
42:13
Speaker 2: teased multiple times some of the distinctive regional spins on
42:18
Speaker 2: the hot dog, so I think we wrap with a
42:20
Speaker 2: few of those for you to try. I mentioned I've
42:23
Speaker 2: already come down on the side of the way they
42:25
Speaker 2: do it in Chicago with mustard relish, and it's kind
42:30
Speaker 2: of a weird green like, you know, almost ungodly neon
42:36
Speaker 2: green colored relish, onion, tomato, pickle spear could take it
42:40
Speaker 2: or leave it, sports Peppers, That's what does it for me.
42:43
Speaker 2: And Celery salt. I really love that, And traditionally on
42:47
Speaker 2: the Chicago Dog, Ketchup is a no no. You'll even
42:49
Speaker 2: hear Obama talking about that. He absolutely abhorrors ketchup, and
42:54
Speaker 2: that is a very Chicago perspective.
42:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what ketchup did to Chicago, but
42:59
Speaker 1: there's still very pissed about it. Also, the tomato.
43:04
Speaker 2: Take it or leave it? I agree to me, the
43:06
Speaker 2: real winner are the sports peppers and the Celery sauce
43:10
Speaker 2: and the onions and the mustard and the relish.
43:12
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to the mustard. We also have to know,
43:15
Speaker 1: going back to the Chicago New York City rivalry, we
43:19
Speaker 1: also have to know that the New York style dog
43:23
Speaker 1: is going to be a bit simpler in formation.
43:26
Speaker 2: For sure it is. It is a much more cut
43:29
Speaker 2: and dry, straightforward dog, typically served with brown mustard, sauer kraut,
43:34
Speaker 2: and a kind of an onion sauce. Yeah, it's sort
43:38
Speaker 2: of sauteed caramelized onions. Sometimes almost has a little bit
43:42
Speaker 2: of a barbecue quality too, maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
43:45
Speaker 2: it's certainly different spins on it. On the onion sauce,
43:48
Speaker 2: you can do that a lot.
43:49
Speaker 1: Some of it will be fresh chopped and others will
43:52
Speaker 1: be clearly just sort of out of a container.
43:56
Speaker 2: Which is funny though, because they're New York. Kind of
44:00
Speaker 2: two styles of dog, the other being, of course, the
44:03
Speaker 2: coney dog, referring to Coney Island, and this one usually
44:06
Speaker 2: has chili with mustard on top and onions. And though
44:11
Speaker 2: it is kind of associated with Coney Islands, even if
44:15
Speaker 2: you get it at Sonic, I think they call it
44:18
Speaker 2: a coney it did in fact originate in the Midwest.
44:23
Speaker 1: And then we have we have multiple variations of this
44:26
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of it, folks, is going
44:29
Speaker 1: to be people in the US fighting about toppings. We
44:33
Speaker 1: got to talk about the Dodger dog. It's branded advertising.
44:37
Speaker 1: It's for the La Dodgers baseball team. They sold in
44:42
Speaker 1: twenty eleven and nope, I think we can assume Max
44:46
Speaker 1: already knows this. In two thousand, twenty eleven, the Dodgers
44:51
Speaker 1: Stadium sold two million hot dogs, and the question immediately
44:59
Speaker 1: became for everybody involved, what makes this Dodger dog so unique?
45:05
Speaker 2: What makes it special? Well, they're particularly long. The traditional
45:10
Speaker 2: hot dog would be around six inches and the Dodger
45:13
Speaker 2: dog's more in line with ten, so they are considered
45:17
Speaker 2: the biggest hot dogs on the market. You can get
45:20
Speaker 2: them in a couple different hot dog varietals, the Super
45:23
Speaker 2: Dodger Dog, which is one hundred percent beef sausage, while
45:27
Speaker 2: the Doyer Dog swaps the traditional toppings for jalapinos, salsa
45:32
Speaker 2: and chili. Then they have a veggie and vegan version,
45:36
Speaker 2: the Italian Dodger Dog with shredded mozzarella and marin aasa,
45:40
Speaker 2: and the Southwestern Dodger Dog with has a little bit
45:43
Speaker 2: of sour cream, avocado slices, pico degayo, and other things.
45:47
Speaker 2: And La does have another pretty famous hot dog place
45:50
Speaker 2: known called Pinks that people talk about a lot, and
45:54
Speaker 2: I've never been. The lines are always crazy long. LA
45:58
Speaker 2: is typically known as more of a burger town, but
46:00
Speaker 2: they also do dogs pretty dang well.
46:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, most US cities will will make a good hot
46:06
Speaker 1: dog for you, from Atlanta to Seattle and beyond. Now
46:11
Speaker 1: I had a question for you to know about this
46:13
Speaker 1: Seattle style hot dog. I've never tried this cream.
46:17
Speaker 2: Cheese, you know, doesn't immediately peak my appetite, but I'd
46:24
Speaker 2: try it. You know, if there was a if I
46:26
Speaker 2: was in Seattle and there was someone making one the
46:28
Speaker 2: authentic Seattle way, I'd give it a go. It wouldn't
46:31
Speaker 2: be wouldn't be my go to preparation though. Yeah. Yeah,
46:34
Speaker 2: I love cream cheese, but it just feels like it's
46:37
Speaker 2: again kind of putting a hat on a hat. Yeah,
46:39
Speaker 2: wish Yeah.
46:40
Speaker 1: And we also everybody from New York who's writing the
46:44
Speaker 1: email now, don't worry, we got you. We're well aware
46:47
Speaker 1: of Gray's Papaya and the Papaya dog. We've all been.
46:52
Speaker 1: It's inexpensive. It is considered one of the best hot
46:56
Speaker 1: dogs in the city of New York. So if you
47:00
Speaker 1: get a chance and you find yourself in the Big Apple,
47:03
Speaker 1: if you've got like a loose three dollars and forty
47:06
Speaker 1: five cents, get a put by a dog.
47:09
Speaker 2: For sure, And I guess we can just wrap with
47:12
Speaker 2: kind of hot dogs as they are today. Like many things,
47:15
Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution changed hot dogs as well, from a
47:19
Speaker 2: street food to a mass produced product that you could buy,
47:22
Speaker 2: you know, in odd numbered packages in the grocery store.
47:26
Speaker 2: The advent of Oscar Meyer and their titular Wiener mobile
47:31
Speaker 2: really revolutionized refrigeration and supply chain and distribution packaging. Of course,
47:38
Speaker 2: I'm creating a network that allowed the hot dogs to
47:42
Speaker 2: be sold in supermarkets all over the country. The great,
47:47
Speaker 2: the great democratization of hot dogs, which further made it
47:51
Speaker 2: the people's food. By the mid nineteen hundreds, as you've
47:54
Speaker 2: already mentioned, ben became a staple of bapguard barbecues, July
47:58
Speaker 2: fourth celebrations, school lunches, sporting events of course, and family cookouts.
48:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this becomes a global phenomenon all the way
48:10
Speaker 1: from murky undetermined legends to the modern day. As we
48:15
Speaker 1: record on Tuesday, June ninth, twenty twenty six, you go
48:19
Speaker 1: pretty much anywhere in this wide world, and you're gonna
48:23
Speaker 1: run into something like a hot dog. And the beautiful
48:27
Speaker 1: thing about it is, you know, similar to pizza, right,
48:32
Speaker 1: or similar to a hamburger. All these different cultures and
48:37
Speaker 1: countries have adapted the basic idea of the hot dog
48:41
Speaker 1: to their local preference. So you'll have breads you've never
48:44
Speaker 1: heard of, You'll have sauces you've never tasted. You'll have toppings,
48:48
Speaker 1: some of which you will love and some of which
48:51
Speaker 1: will thoroughly confuse you.
48:53
Speaker 2: Like mustardo mustard.
48:56
Speaker 1: I was not expected of a startouff it's today.
49:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could put it on
49:02
Speaker 2: a hot dog, right, isn't it like a like a
49:04
Speaker 2: it's like a mustard fruit, right, mustard fruit?
49:07
Speaker 1: Not?
49:07
Speaker 2: Thanks? Yeah, yeah, it's traditionally one of the weirder condiments
49:11
Speaker 2: that comes up, and we talk about this kind of stuff. So,
49:14
Speaker 2: what began as a European tradition even previous to that,
49:18
Speaker 2: a whoop see, a culinary whoop see that led to
49:21
Speaker 2: stuff in animal guts with you know, seasoned meats, evolved
49:25
Speaker 2: into one of the most recognizable facets of American cuisine.
49:30
Speaker 2: Hot dogs and hamburgers. You know, just a simple combination
49:33
Speaker 2: of meat and bread. That really does like to the
49:37
Speaker 2: earlier point of this stuff, tracking the movement of people
49:40
Speaker 2: and culture represents a very rich culinary history, immigration and
49:44
Speaker 2: entrepreneurship and of course pop culture.
49:48
Speaker 1: And people will say the hot dog is as American
49:53
Speaker 1: as apple Pie. Not only is that not the case,
49:57
Speaker 1: as we've solved here today, but also apples are from Kazakhstan. Everybody,
50:03
Speaker 1: please tune in for our upcoming.
50:05
Speaker 2: Episode and apple Pie's Dutch. What yes, tune in for our.
50:10
Speaker 1: Episode on an unhinged eccentric named Johnny Appleseed. Noel, thank
50:17
Speaker 1: you so much for this awesome research brief. I'm a
50:22
Speaker 1: little mad at you because it does have me hungry
50:25
Speaker 1: and starving. But also big thanks to our super producer,
50:29
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
50:30
Speaker 2: Max the coney Boy Williams. How about long Dog too,
50:35
Speaker 2: dirty long Dog?
50:37
Speaker 1: Silver long Dog, Silver long Dog.
50:40
Speaker 2: So only the third time I've gotten that nickname? Oh wow?
50:45
Speaker 2: All right? Oh humble brags, Yeah, humble brags. Huge thanks
50:49
Speaker 2: to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizler, A J. Bahamas, Jacobs, the Puzzler,
50:53
Speaker 2: Chris Frasciotis and Leaves, Jeff Coates.
50:54
Speaker 1: Here in spirit and huge thanks to Kobeyashi.
50:58
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, what was the next time, folks. For more
51:07
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
51:11
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.