Separated by a Common Language

In Britain we distinguish between a beefburger (the patty) and a hamburger (patty in a bun - and I would use bun for this use, even though without the patty/beefburger inside it I would call it a roll). Burger can be used for either, and you do hear "burger in a bun" and "burger without the bun".

Good Lynne, you are absolutely right. I've added a paragraph in the post with your name on it.

Here in St Louis we will be having pork steaks, which are a st louis thing, you can not find them any where else in the USA that I know of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_steak

As an upstate NY kid, I've never seen red-hots for hot dogs/franks/wiener, except in literature. (Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who left Congress after sending a picture of his underpants - with him in them - over Twitter, is now making jokes about his suggestive name as he runs for NYC mayor.)

I have a different recollection of the term red hot:
"My girl is red hot
Your girl ain't doodily squat."

Of course, a hot dog can also be a daredevil, or showoff.

@Mindy: My local cafe in Sarasota, FL has pork steaks fairly often as the daily lunch special.

As I'm from a non-Anglophone Asian country, our understanding of the term 'hotdog' is also a way of serving a sausage. I always thought this usage would be 'incorrect' back in English, but now I know it's at least OED-approved, lol.

In Canada, you would get a chicken breast in a bun in most restaurants if you ordered a chicken burger. At fast food places, it would be minced and breaded chicken.

I used to see beefburger for the sandwich back in the 1960s (in the U.S., specifically New Jersey). I remember asking my mother about it, and she explained that it was used so that people wouldn't assume hamburgers were made from ham.

To me, as a Brit, yes it means the whole thing rather than the sausage, but it's got to be a frankfurter.

I have seen other sausages sold as hot dogs, as in your story, but it's rare and I'd consider it to be a mistake. And when I see it it annoys me, because I think "damn, if I'd known it was a proper sausage instead of one of those disgusting frankfurter things I'd have ordered one"

This reminds me of a visit to Dodge City we made thirty years ago - at lunchtime since we were on a camping holiday - hoping for a proper steak meal. At that time of day we could 'only' be offered a steak sandwich - huge plates of steak appeared, with a tiny piece of bread underneath. Perhaps the steak in the evening was even bigger....

I always thinkof a hot dog as being a frankfurter, but it's true you do often get them in the UK made with other kinds of sausage (which I find vaguely disappointing).
I think the term "beefburger" originated with the frozen patties that have been on sale here since the 1960s. "Burger" is now often used as a generic term for a meat or vegetarian patty.

I agree with Colleen re: 'chicken burger' in the US that it's usually a chicken breast in a bun. I can't say I've ever seen a chicken burger that was ground chicken, only turkey burgers.

Thanks for pointing out this distinction between US/UK hot dogs. I'd vaguely noticed it but not really paid much attention to why it was different since it's so rare to see hot dogs here outside of IKEA! And you're not alone in thinking beef burger sounds redundant. I like to think it's because hamburger makes people thing it's made of pork/ham...

Should've said the minced chicken thing in my experience is called a chicken patty, not burger, and, again as Colleen says, it's breaded.

Isn't a red-hot the spicy, red, cinnamony candy in a box you seem to get only at the movies? Never heard it used referring to meat, tubular or otherwise. (Iowa and elsewhere)

@John Burgess, That is So awesome! Whenever I would ask about Pork steaks, I have gotten blank stares. No one seems to have heard of them before. Also Toasted Ravioli, Another St. Louis food. Missed them while on vacation. And when I went to a Chevys fresh mex in NY, I asked if they had sopapilla's for dessert, and the waiter thought It was soup. Strange.

If you'd like to discuss 'red hot', I'd suggest following the link to that post, as these issues have been covered pretty well in the comments there.

As for 'chicken burger'--I'm not saying that American restaurants serve ground chicken, I'm saying that they call things in buns 'chicken sandwiches' (or similar), not 'chicken burgers'. Hang around long enough in a Gourmet Burger Kitchen in the UK, and you'll run into American tourists being confused by the terminology.

along the same lines, I noticed that in the UK a "club sandwich" is a triple-decker sandwich but not necessarily with bacon, chicken, and tomato, which is my (Canadian) definition of a club sandwich.

Here in Britain, the meaning of word burger depends on whether you're a consumer or a cook.

If you're eating out, a burger is a hamburger.

If you're buying something ready-made to cook at home, and especially if you're following a recipe, then a SOMETHING burger is what you call a patty made of minced (ground) — or at least chopped SOMETHING.

With the exception of beefburger, these compounds are usually written as two words. My spellchecker still dislikes beefburger, preferring either beef burger or beef-burger.

Lamb burgers and veggie burgers are about as common as British-type chicken burgers. But pick virtually any foodstuff, and you'll find that somebody has created a burger recipe — more than likely on the BBC recipe web pages.

I'm not sure I remember all the dishes I've googled. they include: horse burger, snail burger, mutton burger, rabbit burger (aka bunny burger), pork burger, fruit burger, lobster burger, quorn burger, ostrich burger, veal burger (sold at Waitrose), shrimp burger, cod burger, haddock burger, potato burger, whale burger, calamari burger (squid burger), snake burger, eel burger (These last two are British names for Indonesian and Japanese dishes.)

I also got results for cabbage burger, but this is a Russian-American dish with beef — on the analogy of cheeseburger.

I had thought competely the opposite of the original post's account, that it was the Americans who reserved "hamburger" for the sandwich, with "beef patty" or "Salisbury steak" for the bunless version that my Irish mammy called "hamburgers" when she served it to us as children, with no bun, and typically with beans and rice. Neither "beef patty" nor "Salisbury steak" is in my dialect. True, Americans say "hamburger meat" for "cheap beef mince"; but by the same token they say "jean shirt" for "denim shirt", though shirts are never jeans (and not all jeans are denim?).

I completely fail to recognise Lynne C's distinction between "hamburger" and "beefburger". A "beefburger" is another word for "hamburger": to reassure those who either stupidly think hamburgers must be made of ham, or suspiciously think hamburgers might be made of any old meat.

A "burger" is by default a hamburger but might be some variant with a different filling. This applies not just for frozen-food shopping (per David Crosbie) but also at takeaways. These often distinguish a premium "chicken sandwich" (made from a single piece of chicken breast) from a cheap "chicken burger" (made from meat slurry, sometimes coated in crumb batter for bulk and to hold the evil thing together).

Note that a "cheeseburger" (presumably a US term originally?) has cheese *as well* as beef, not instead of it. Likewise "baconburger" (distinguish "gammonburger"), "coleslaw burger", "batter burger", and "spice burger".

Mollymooly

There seems to be clear England-Ireland divide, since I too take a hamburger to include the bun, while a beefburger is usually what the Americans call a patty — unless the burger joint chooses to use the word otherwise.

The BBC recipe site burgers are prepared from scratch, and the Waitose veal burgers are not sold frozen.

I don't think any of the supermarkets or butchers that I go to (I'm English, living in Scotland) use the word hamburger.

I think it's an American~British thing that cheeseburger has ADDED cheese and so on.

AmE — SOMETHING burger = beef-burger with added SOMETHING

BrE — SOMETHING burger = patty made of minced SOMETHING

My example of cabbage burger is formed on the American model.

I would be very surprised (and delighted) to find that all those English cheeseburgers have cheese *instead* of beef, rather than as well as. As a vegetarian, I have been studiously avoiding them; perhaps I needn't have worried.

As so often, I agree with David Crosbie on UK usage.

Somebody once told me that their daughter had renamed the nice Venison-burgers that I was buying, 'Bambi-burgers'. I still bought them, and apparently so did she.

It's normal to eat *burgers at home as one would eat any other sort of prepared meat, with potatoes and vegetables etc on a plate.

I don't know what it means in St Louis. A 'pork steak' here is a piece of pork cut as a steak, a bit like a chop without the bone. 'Turkey steak' is used in the same way to describe a similar cut of turkey.

I'm British and I disagree. A hot dog has to be a frankfurter-type sausage (and the roll should be a soft one, not a baguette). Serving normal sausages in hot-dog buns as "hot dogs" is the sort of thing well-meaning but clueless grandmothers do to disappointed kids. Like putting tomato puree on a slice of ordinary bread and calling it pizza. I'm surprised at your theatre doing it.

I'd also go with what you call the American definition of burger. A chicken burger is made of ground chicken, like you get in McDonald's. I didn't realise Nando's and GBK called pieces of chicken breast "burgers", and if I had discovered this before reading this post, I would have assumed that was an American oddity.

I have seen "Portabello burgers" which is basically a portabello mushroom in a bun.

Incidentally, if you go to Gourmet Burger Kitchen, don't order the puy lentil burger - it is a complete misnomer; the burger is made out of potatoes with about 2 lentils per burger, most disappointing! Their lamb ones are gorgeous, though. Especially if you order them without a bun so you can have chips.

I was recently in Germany and was reminded of the origin of the word when seeing plenty of signs for "Magdeburger" this and that, pertaining to the town of Magdeburg, where we were staying, and nothing to do with meat!

Years ago in France, if you ordered a "hot-dog" in a café (always hyphenated) you got practically a whole baguette, usually spread with mustard, with two frankfurters inside and cheese toasted on the outside! Delicious. Not sure if you can get them now....

It has been some years since I have been there, but I am reasonably sure that the chicken burgers at Nando's in South Africa (where the chain originated) are made from ground chicken, not a chicken breast on a bun.

This comment has been removed by the author.

Not sure about South Africa--their menu says 'Chicken Burger'. UK's says 'Chicken Breast Fillet Burger'.

But when I lived there, Nando's was my Sunday treat to myself. When I refer to it as 'a South African chain' in UK, people often don't believe me, but I was so happy to find it here!

Thinking about the origins of the foodstuffs frankfurter and hamburger, I looked up Vienna steak on our friendly search engine. I thought it was a similar minced meat patty, as served at UK school lunch,definitely no relation to wiener schnitzel, and discovered:
in wartime UK, one 'knew' it was horsemeat (recent letter to the Times); recipes seem to involve either minced meat and carrots as well as onion, made into a patty, OR it is a tenderised cut of beef that might not otherwise be recognised as steak. Definitely ersatz, in all cases.

And then I looked up 'berliner'. Oh Boy. Seems JFK was never in danger of calling himself a (BrE)jam doughnut because in Berlin it is known as a pfannkuchen.

I suppose this is vaguely off topic but what exactly is minced meat? Is that just another way to refer to ground meat? Is there a difference in preparation?

Sine nomine

The term ground meat is never used in Britain. Well, there must be some Americans here who use it when speaking to each other. But the overwhelming majority of British English speakers never speak of ground meat, and the majority of them wouldn't even understand the term. For us, you can only grind hard, dry things.

Clearly BrE minced meat and AmE ground meat are usually the same. Whether minced would always translate as ground I can't say.

In my kitchen I have a mincer, which I still use occasionally. It does two things simultaneously:

• It compacts and pulps food (by forcing it through little holes)
• It chops the food finely or relatively finely (with revolving sharp blades)

Nowadays we use food processors to reduce foodstuffs to something you can shape or stir, but (with one exception) we label the results as if we'd used older technology.

• If we stop very early, we call the result chopped — as if we'd used a hand-held blade.

• If we carry on with relatively dry stuff (usually in a
different container) so as to produce a powder or a meal, we call the result ground — as if we'd used a mill

•If we carry on with relative wet stuff so as to produce a liquid or sludge, we call it puréed or liquidized.

• If we carry on with of firm-but-wet stuff so as to produce a mess of little bits stuck together, we call the result minced — as if we'd used a mincer.

When we buy minced meat, we generally call it mince. Unless we specify the meat as in lamb mince, veal mince etc, then everybody takes it to mean 'minced beef'.

@David Crosbie:
The term ground meat is never used in Britain. Well, there must be some Americans here who use it when speaking to each other. But the overwhelming majority of British English speakers never speak of ground meat, and the majority of them wouldn't even understand the term. For us, you can only grind hard, dry things.

* Ground meat standardisation (from a Danish company, but clearly intended to be in British English).
* Russian chef 'murdered father-in-law, ground up meat and served him as pies to customers in popular cafe near Kremlin' from the Daily Mail, obviously. It refers to the machine as a "mincer". Perhaps fathers-in-law are particularly hard and dry :)

vp

Up to a point, Lord Copper. The Danish example is, well, Danish. And the Mail example is a Past Simple of grind up — not a single word and not an adjective.

No doubt, ground meat is gaining, well, ground in British awareness, but there's still a long, long way to go. And actual usage by BrE speakers is way behind that.

The Mail's 'grinding up his flesh' may signal the start of a new trend in BrE, or it may be an aberration. The status quo is reflected in

Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum
I smell the blood of an Englishman
Be he living or be he dead
I'll grind his bones (the hard and dry bits of him)
to make my bread

@David Crosbie: Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Please forgive me. Unqualified (or insufficiently qualified) generalizations are like a red rag to a bull, especially if I haven't yet drunk my morning chai.

I have nothing to say about burgers of whatever variety. Just wondering if there's a place on the interwebs where we could watch/listen to your How America Saved English talk.

Spiced mixed bean burger with tzatziki (v)

The (v) indicates that the burger is made of beans — not a meaty hamburger with added beans. Could a menu in America use this burger name?

Lynne

I'm supposed to be reducing my beef intake for environmental reasons

The blurb at the end of your link claims that they serve locally sourced fayre. So not too many food miles.

If I heard meat referred to as 'ground' I think I would assume it was ground to a sort of slurry or paste consistency, rather than the lots of little lumps one associates with normal mince. But I agree, 'mince' is a normal term here, and 'ground' is not.

'Vegburger' (g is soft) or 'veggie-burger' both strike me as familiar words, and everyone here would know what they mean.

By the way, the comment about bambi-burgers was from me but I pressed the wrong key and it has appeared as anonymous.

One Time In Band Camp We Had "Saugi/Saugy/Soggy Dogs"... Rhode Island

And A Question For The World... Submarine-Style Sandwiches, Does Anyone Else Call Them "Grinders"?

Submarine-Style Sandwiches, Does Anyone Else Call Them "Grinders"?

I have a feeling this topic has been covered elsewhere, and Lynne asks us to post comments on the relevant post, even if it is five years later. Although I can't actually find the relevant post....

But I will just say that hamburgers in buns are not called "sandwiches" in the UK.

Anonymous: No, the talk is not online. If it were, I wouldn't be getting all these gigs to give it. I happily give it anywhere, for travel expenses. I wouldn't give it in the US and a lot of it would probably baffle Americans, as it is particularly aimed at unpicking British beliefs about America(ns) and language, mentioning UK media stories and locally famous people. I could give talks in the US (if anyone ever wanted to coordinate some with my travels in the US), but they would have to be different talks.

If any SIXTH FORM COLLEGES out there would like me to come and talk about Americanisms and about why English Language is a great thing to study at university, I'm super-happy to come, and might even be able to rustle up my own travel money.

David: the beef's local pedigree doesn't matter as much as how much energy and land goes into producing it.

I have not covered 'grinders', which is a New England word, but I think I may have mentioned (when discussing sandwiches) that these things have lots of local names. My aim here is to focus on dialect at the national level. But if you are interested in that kind of thing, Bert Vaux covered it: http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/views/1104

Mrs Redboots

Although I can't actually find the relevant post....

The link was hiding in plain sight. If you click on the words

(in the American use of this word), a type of sandwich

you'll get to baked goods.

David Crosbie - I think there are more exceptions than rule to your Something-burger breakdown: In the US, a cheese or bacon burger would have the cheese or bacon on top, a black bean or turkey burger would be made of black beans or ground turkey, and a mushroom burger could be either.

I didn't see this elsewhere in the comments, but to me (in Iowa), a "beefburger" is loose cooked ground beef served on a hamburger bun. (We also call these sandwiches Maid-Rites after the restaurant that has served them for decades.) "Burger" is often used for a hamburger and never that I've heard for a beefburger. I visit concession stands a lot for my kids' activities, and I've never heard anyone question the use of either term -- we all seem to know what we're getting.

I should have said in my post above that a loose-meat beefburger is different than a Sloppy Joe, which usually has a tomato and seasoning sauce. We top a beefburger with the same condiments as you would use on a hamburger.

Anonymous

David Crosbie - I think there are more exceptions than rule to your Something-burger breakdown:

Well, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to have got the AmE somewhat wrong. But I assure you that BrE SOMETHING burger is almost always made of SOMETHING — except for some American dishes imported to our menus along with with their American names (cheeseburger, baconburger and not much else.)

Hello, Lynne and followers,

Youse might want to check out
http://www.seriouseats.com/maps/united-states-of-burgers?ref=pop_serious_eats

Thanks for the effort you put into this blog, and please keep up the great work.

As noted earlier, I think there's a sense with "hot dog" in BrE that a frankfurter in a soft bun with ketchup and American mustard is sort of the Platonic ideal, but that a chipolata in a crusty roll with ketchup and Dijon is entirely possible as an approximation. (I for one welcome this as I don't really like frankfurters, but I think that's just a personal preference).

Many burger vans/chip shops offer both, distinguishing them either as "hot dogs; sausages" or "hot dogs - frankfurter; [alternative type of sausage]".

My contribution to the discussion re types of sausages in British hot dogs:

If I bought a hot dog from a van or something, I would expect it to be a frankfurter (which is the main reason I probably WOULDN'T get one as I don't like them much).

However, I would be astonished if a hot dog that wasn't sold by a business (e.g. if made by a friend, or sold by parents at a school fair) was a frankfurter. I've never even noticed them in the supermarket, to be honest (though admittedly I've also never looked).

The two types of hot dogs I'm most accustomed to are:

1. The tinned variety, slim and soft sausages cooked in water on the stove.
2. On the barbecue - usually thicker sausages for obvious reasons, though no particular type.

In all cases they would be within bread rolls - but a particular type of slim rolls. I've never heard the term "hot dog" applied to a sausage in a round bun - which cafes, bakeries etc sell as breakfasts.

Describing the meat as something put through a grinder vs. mincer doesn't really help, because I think we call the same item by two different names, also. I have my mother's meat grinder; I don't use it often but I have occasionally. It clamps onto a table and you drop whole clumps of meat in the top where a spiraling "screw-like" section forces them through little holes past cutting blades as you crank the handle. I don't remember the brand name (if it even has one stamped on it) but it looks something like this: http://media.qcsupply.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/5/1/510481.jpg That sounds like what David Crosbie referred to as a mincer if I'm understanding him correctly.

Before it's cooked everyone around here just calls the uncooked meat hamburger, but the stores actually call it ground beef instead. Veggieburger I think is slang, but I have heard soyburger in the health food store to refer to burger made from soybeans -- and as someone said earlier, sometimes the (something) burger means it's made of something else like turkey burger, other times it means it's a basic ground beef hamburger topped with whatever -- bacon, cheese, mushrooms, etc. One of the fast food places sells a bacon double cheeseburger, which means you get two beef patties, topped with cheese and bacon. You will also generally get shredded lettuce, a tomato slice and a couple slices of dill pickle with one of those, and some sort of mayonnaise based sauce, and as said, the cheese will be a bit melted. (There's a reason I don't order this.....) I think the defining difference is if you can use it as a topping (cheese, bacon, mushrooms...), then it goes on, but you still have a beef patty, if you can't (soybeans, turkey, venison) then you make the patty out of it instead.

Also, here I've never heard red hots refer to hot dogs, only to the candy. I have heard brats used as shorthand for bratwurst, actually it's what we normally say anymore, and it is pronounced differently. Both would be almost always be served in a hot dog bun, though you can do other things, like cut a hot dog up into macaroni and cheese (not the good homemade kind, but the cheap kind you make quickly from a prepackaged box). A footlong is just an extra long hot dog, same type of meat item, but instead of being five to six inches long (13 to 15 cm.) it would be probably around eight or nine inches (20 to 23 cm.). For the record, I'm in western South Dakota, near the Wyoming border, and I'm 56.

And this brings up a rather related question -- we refer to the round buns as hamburger buns and the long buns as hot dog buns. Is this the same in Britain, or do you call them something else?

Starwefter

That sounds like what David Crosbie referred to as a mincer if I'm understanding him correctly.

Yes, that's what I think of as a heavy-duty mincer for professionals. My mother's mincer had a much shorter tube. My own mincer is the same shape as my mother's but is considerably lighter, with the container bits made of plastic. It looks more or less like this model.

Starwefter

And this brings up a rather related question -- we refer to the round buns as hamburger buns and the long buns as hot dog buns. Is this the same in Britain, or do you call them something else?

Bakers and supermarkets may use the terms, especially at this time of year (barbecue weather), but I don't think many ordinary punters would use them. As Lynne observed on another thread, we seldom use bun for something that isn't sweet.

The safest way to be understood is Some round rolls for hamburgers, please. Some long rolls for hot dogs, please.

For other terms, visit Lynne's baked good thread.

I noticed your link to an earlier post metioning the word "barbecue", and you might wish to revisit that word. I don't know what it means to the Brits, but to an American cook who knows what he's doing, it's a method of cooking: low and slow. Burgers and dogs are not barbecued. They are grilled. Your earlier post did correctly point out that it can also be the meat cooked by the barbecue method.

Kitchemudge

British English use is very simple:

• The verb to barbecue means to grill something — anything — out of doors

• The countable noun a barbecue denotes one of two things
—1. an apparatus on which the stuff is grilled
—2. a single occasion when people come together, grill and eat the stuff

The thread War of Independence/Revolutionary War and an aside on barbecue indicates that American English usage is much more complicated and more nuanced. Because the word has been so long in popular usage there are historical and regional variations. With your foodie nom-de-plume you may object to the variations, but the evidence is there that they exist.

American English also has an uncountable noun as in some barbecue — which is absent from British vocabulary.

As with hot dog and hamburger, we use the term for what strikes us as unusual and interesting about the American foodstuff. What you mean by the words isn't so relevant (to us).

See also red hots for use of hot dog.

If what Johnny E says of BrE is correct, then I would say BrE and AmE have the same ideal version of what a hotdog is, but different essential requirements.

In AmE, in my experience, the prototypical hotdog is just what Johnny E describes, a frankfurter on a soft bun, with catsup, mustard and relish being the standard toppings, though served plain and you add them yourself.

But a frankfurter without a bun is still a hotdog. And a brat on a bun is not.

Ek

You'll never persuade a Brit of my generation that a hot dog can be a mere sausage. Younger speakers may eventually be conditioned into the American usage — not by language activists but by food industry packaging and marketing.

The up-market supermarket I usually patronise (Waitrose) is celebrating the unusual hot 'barbecue' weather by putting cans and jars of sausages in brine called hot dogs on its shelves. (There's even a jar of red hots.) A slightly less premium supermarket (Sainsburys) is selling something even rarer: sausages called hot dogs dry and wrapped in plastic.

Most British supermarkets sell sausages called frankfurters all year round.

A sausage of any kind on its own is not (UK usage) a 'hot dog'. It only becomes one by being served in a roll, preferably + fried onions but not essential. The onions (to me) are more essential than mustard. The roll needs to be a long one rather than a round one because of the shape of a sausage.

A round roll, as used for a burger (also please with fried onions) I'd usually call a 'bap'.

I can't off hand think of a generic word for a long roll. However (to me) a 'finger roll' is a small one, probably too small for a sausage, and a 'brioche' is one like a small fat French stick, usually, though, used for serving things which include salad.

On mustard incidentally, one friend of mine says of French mustard, 'it's quite nice as a flavouring as long as you don't call it mustard'. I agree with him, but he does come from Norfolk (for US readers, where most proper English mustard comes from).

I have just re-read the original post with its comments about cheese ... surely the main difference between American(-style) cheeseburgers and the British 'cheeseburger with pretensions' is that the latter will invariably use a hard cheese such as real cheddar - this is unlikely to melt even with prolonged contact with a hot meat patty, hence the different way of serving it.
The American processed cheese slice that is used commercially, and is also available in UK supermarkets, contains a surprisingly small amount of cheese and melts very readily. It really only has a place as a garnish, providing very little nutrition.

@biochemist: In the US, all kinds of cheese are melted on burgers. Cheddar melts if you expose it to heat--the difference in the UK is that it is not put on the burger while the burger is being cooked, as it would be in US.

However, I would be astonished if a hot dog that wasn't sold by a business (e.g. if made by a friend, or sold by parents at a school fair) was a frankfurter. I've never even noticed them in the supermarket, to be honest (though admittedly I've also never looked).

Pretty much every supermarket sells frankfurters (either the Herta brand or Polish brands I'm unfamiliar with). That said, even I as a US born Brit wouldn't use them for hot dogs in a barbecue. People here expect sausages. I do use however use them for a rice based dish with barbecue sauce.

The UK hotdog conumdrum is further confused by the existence of something called "Hot Dog Sausages". These aren't Frankfurters, but flopply nasty things generally tinned, and made from mechanically recovered "meat".

The look of surprise an unitiated American gets when being handed a British "sausage dog" (as I've heard them described since moving stateside) is nothing compared to that when they find out the yellow stuff they have generously squeezed is actually English Mustard!

This whole frankfurter/hot dog thing has gotten me thinking, and while I never would call it a frankfurter myself, and don't think I have ever heard someone call it that, if someone came up to me in the store and asked "Do you know where the frankfurters are?" I would know what they were talking about -- so the term isn't unheard of in America, or at least wasn't in my youth in the 1960s. I think it was more likely to be shortened to franks though, and that one anymore might take me a moment to process, for my brain to track down the right pathway so to speak.

I think I did hear them called wieners (pronounced "WEE-nerz) occasionally when I was young; I'd know what someone was looking for then also. I also found this, about the spelling: http://www.beedictionary.com/common-errors/weiner_vs_wiener And the Vienna sausages that came in a can were different, they were much smaller, and softer, something else entirely.

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starwefter

Some contributor to Wikipedia claims that frankfurters and weiners are the same thing — the latter Austrian word (='Vienna') being, perversely, the Swiss name.

Musically, both terms have been immortalised:

1 By Bo Carter, master of the single entendre. Listen to his recording of Please Warm My Weiner. (The title was re-used for an album of hokum. Type Please Warm My Weiner into Google images to see its striking cover.)

2. The song which sounds like a British description of hot dogs Frankfurter Sandwiches.

Actually, I've come to doubt whether American hot dogs are made with the sort of frankfurter that's sold in Britain. Your sausages seem to be beef or at least beefy; our frankfurters seem to be decidedly porky. They may also be firmer.

The best American hot dogs are kosher and therefore beef. My faves have natural casings. In my experience UK frankfurters are inedibly mushy in the mouth. So it's no wonder most would prefer a Cumberland or Lincolnshire.

David Crosbie

*blinks* Good grief -- what did I just listen to? *blinks some more and falls off my chair laughing!*

That was beyond awesome!! Thank you for the link!! (Yes, I'm about to use up my allotment of exclamation points.)

We actually have two types of hot dogs sold regularly in stores (at least where I live), both kinds of them packaged in the plastic already earlier referred to. One is made from pork and chicken, the other is all beef, both are usually sold under the same brand name and clearly labeled as to which they are, and the all beef usually cost more. They vary in price by brand from very cheap to rather expensive, but as Lynne says, the best are all beef and usually kosher. I've always heard you really don't want to know what goes into the making of hot dogs, but my impression is that they are both from the ... uh, left over excess for lack of a better term? That said, I agree, I had some were kosher beef, hideously expensive (two to three times the price of the ones I usually buy), and insanely wonderful, as in you've-just-died-and-gone-to-heaven better than the usual ones I buy.

yank here. and while i fully understand the issue here, i am puzzled over reader comments about "a mere sausage" vis-à-vis hotdogs. sausage is a major UPGRADE over a hotdog! going to an event expecting (US) "hotdogs" and finding sausages would surprise me as well, but only insofar as i'd be surprised to find filet mignon where hamburgers had been advertised. i'd keep my mouth SHUT and enjoy my good fortune.

btw, in my native boston, "hotdog" is the norm, but "frankfurt" sans -er comes next (like hamburg and cheeseburg). i rarely hear the "frankfurter" except in rocky horror discussions.

also, "red hot" is a very specific (super spicy and BRIGHT RED) TYPE of hotdog. i don't know anyone who uses that for hotdogs in general -- is that regional?

PS - your original point reminds me of an experience i had in japan. while there are a few non-beef uses of steak in english ("swordfish steak"), i think we can all agree there is a DEFAULT meaning to "steak" alone.

so imagine my surprise when i ordered "steak" and got...TOFU! not b/c it was some sort of vegan substitute but just b/c the owner decided "tofu steak" was as good a default as any. in perfect english, she parried my complaint with "OUR steak is tofu - did you want a meat one instead maybe?"

LOL. live and learn. what do you expect in a country where hotdogs are made of...FISH?!

("wiener" the term to use for a meat one....)

I'm sorry, but I feel the need to clear something up. A COOK OUT involves hamburgers and hot dogs. A BARBEQUE serves barbequed meat--low and slow my friends and certainly no hamburgers.

But, maybe that's just a Texas thing?

That's the kind of thing that's discussed (in the comments at least) in the 'barbecue' post, so click through if you'd like to be a part of that discussion. It's a very regional word.

"I didn't see this elsewhere in the comments, but to me (in Iowa), a "beefburger" is loose cooked ground beef served on a hamburger bun. "

I've heard that called a Coney Island Burger.

Beeing from Germany I'm used to Frikandels (a long, skinless, dark-coloured meat sausage from the Netherlands- usually deep-fried) in a Hot Dog bun.
I consider Wiener or Frankfurter Würstchen not as the real deal, so imagine my disappointment ordering a Hot Dog in the US for the first (and last) time and getting one as sold at Ikea. I felt betrayed ;o)

Aren't they called Hamburgers because they are from Hamburg? Frankfurters are from Frankfurt. Weiners are from Vienna....

I second Colleen's post about chicken burgers in Canada. A chicken burger (I would never call it a chicken sandwich--that would require bread instead of a bun) is usually breast if at a restaurant, and usually breaded deep-fried patty at fast food.

However, the way that a deep-fried chicken patty is made is different than a beef patty. To me, a beef burger is ground/minced beef molded into a patty shape. A turkey burger would be the same. A chicken burger is not molded minced chicken; it's more the consistency of a large McDonald's chicken nugget.

Side note: While studying in England, I discovered a lot of minced chicken in things like spaghetti sauce. I was surprised -- I can't recall EVER having minced chicken in Canada. Beef, absolutely. Lamb, maybe. Turkey is certainly becoming more common. But chicken? Never. Is it just me, or is minced chicken much more common in the UK?

After living in England for a year I am still learning new terms for things. Love it.

I know this is a bit of a bump but i thought it would be appropriate to add here there are two things really.

The first is about the differences between a hot dog and a frankfurter in the US. A product labeled as hotdogs or franks are any of those thin reddish sausages that have been discused and can be made of chicken pork beef or turkey and any mix of those meats, and the most common makeup is pork chicken and beef. But a frankfurter which i have never seen packaged as a hot dog will be all beef and either have a natural casing or be labeled as skinless. However if someone says hotdog they may be referencing either one.

And the second thing which is really why i posted was because where i grew up in East Hampton, New York. Out on the end of Long Island for those who are curious. We referred to ground beef as chop meat, almost never chopped meat (but sometimes), and it was even often labeled that way in the stores. It was always what we would call ground beef never any other meat, and we still referred to other ground or minced meats as 'ground lamb' 'ground veal' etc.

Hope this is more informative and interesting as a late comment than it is annoying.
thanks for the blog.

And to really add to the confusion, a concoction of a fried, or broiled cooked blue crab meat, is called a crab cake. Like a cod fish cake, or salmon cake. We don't have fish pie in the US that I know of. Sounds tasty though.

Late-breaking burger-y US evidence, courtesy America's Test Kitchen.

For the uninitiated, ATK is a cooking show on US public broadcasting. It's part of the larger Cook's Illustrated empire, with the same shtick: trying to find "the perfect recipe."

I recently filled out a survey for them. My reward? A free copy of Ultimate Burgers. Crucial point for the burger debate, as illustrated on the back cover: every blessed one of the 23 "perfected" recipes is made from ground-up stuff. Ground beef, ground pork with chopped-up andouille, ground turkey, ground shrimp, ground black beans, ground lentil-mushroom-onion-bulgur. (Which means that every blessed recipe also calls for a food processor, but that's a separate problem.)

On the other hand, take a second look at that photo. I've highlighted two of the squares showing that a "burger" doesn't need to be on a bun. One of photos shows a burger on a salad, and another illustrates the recipe for Patty Melts, which are served on toast.

Very American source, very American answer to "what makes a burger a burger?" It's what's in the middle, not what it's served on. And what's in the middle is ground-up stuff, not a solid mass of something.

BrE (Scot, 60+). I’m a bit surprised that none of the BrE commenters have mentioned the British fairground (AmE carnival?) hamburger. Usually larger and flatter than a McDonalds, and served in a larger (but still round) roll, these patties come with or without fried onions. You add the tomato sauce (ketchup) and/or mustard yourself. From a plastic squeezy bottle. Anything salads like lettuce or sliced tomato is not available. Often described as tasting like cardboard.
Years ago I watched Roseanne (the US sitcom) regularly. I seem to remember a story arc where Roseanne and her sister went into business selling “loose meat sandwiches”. At the time, I assumed that loose meat was another synonym for ground meat or mince. It almost is, but only if the word sandwich is included, apparently.
As others gave said, at home, I would usually steve my burger on a plate with no roll (to me, a bun is sweet), with something like chips. I have never managed to order this in a U.K. restaurant: the roll is obligatory, and it’s also really difficult not to have salad and/or mayo. Leaving the roll and fillings to one side is not an option. My generation don’t waste food.
Finally, have Americans always talked about burger buns, or is this terminology an invention of the big burger chains, as it is I the U.K. (IMO).

I don't know whether this goes here or on the even older post about baked goods, but on Facebook yesterday, an American friend posted a photo of what she called a "taco dog". The picture showed something in an ordinary bridge roll with something on top - my friend elaborated that the topping was called "taco meat", whatever that is. I (BrE) would have expected, had I ordered such a thing, that it would be a sausage served in a taco, so the type of bread (or wrap, in this case) rather than the contents!

I know I'm late to the party, but the burger thing is by far my biggest pet peeve with British English. To describe a sandwich based on the bread makes no sense. The filling is where it's at. If I ordered a pastrami sandwich on rye and I got home and opened it and it was on whole wheat, I'd be mildly annoyed. But if I got tuna on rye, I'd get my coat back on and walk back to the restaurant for a new sandwich.

There is just so much ambiguity in the way Brits use the word. What is a veggie burger? Is it some fried onions and peppers on a bun or is it a veggie patty on a bun? Is a chicken burger a ground chicken patty on a bun or a a chicken thigh or breast? Is a cheeseburger a slice of cheese on a bun? All this does is lead to confusion. At best, you need overly long names to describe what you're actually getting and you have to read all the description or ask, so it makes the whole process harder.

And for the Americans up above who said there are no "chicken burgers" in the US, there are. I don't know if they're common any more, but when the turkey burger became a thing, a chicken burger made a go at it too. They even made it to chain restaurant menus and everything. There's also salmon burgers, tuna burgers etc etc etc. You might never have seen these on a menu or tried them, but they are all a patty of meat, on a bun. A burger. The only possible confusion is that you can also buy a chicken patty (in the freezer section), that is a patty of chicken that's breaded. The single fly in the ointment, compared to the British way of doing it that seems all fly and no ointment. Sorry if I sound rude, but like I said, this is my biggest pet peeve.