Posted by Adam Kuban, April 14, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Editor's note: Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a while since we grilled someone, and we couldn't get back in the groove with a better subject. You know that burger history book by Josh Ozersky that comes out this month? Andrea Murphy here worked as Ozersky's research assistant on it. We figured we'd get all kinds of dirt on "Mr. Cutlets" from her. So, without further ado, let's get Grillin'!
How to shape an imaginary burger patty, Andrea?
Name: Andrea Murphy
Location: New York City
Occupation: Researcher
You served as Josh "Mr. Cutlets" Ozersky's research assistant for his book "Hamburger: A History." What exactly did that entail? I spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library (and other libraries) looking through newspapers, books, academic papers, obscure food industry journals, and other sources. What would usually happen is that Josh would give me a topic and I would go find information. Sometimes he was very specific (a list of movies either from the 1950s or that took place in the 1950s where people eat hamburgers) and other times more general. There was a lot of photocopying.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 28, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Man does not live by burger alone. Were that the case, we'd all blindly consume the stale-bunned, hockey pucks at the nearest McKing. True burger fans hunger for a deeper understanding of their favorite food, and, luckily, two books that lavish obsessive attention on this dish are hitting bookstores in April.
The end of the month will mark the publication of Josh Ozersky's The Hamburger: A History (April 22) and George Motz's Hamburger America (April 8; though it's already in some stores).
And while two burger books in one month might seem a bit much, they're two very different and complementary works.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, July 14, 2005 at 11:00 AM
Hey hey, burger buddies! I've got a question for you: Have you read Hamburgers & Fries yet?
You haven't?
Well then, put down that double-double, wipe the grease from your hands, and point your mouse to the link above. It'll take you to Amazon, where you can order this tasty read, the third book in a series exploring iconic American food items (the first two were Fried Chicken
and Apple Pie). In it, food writer John T. Edge travels the U.S., examining regional patty preferences and cooking customs.
Near his home in the South, for instance, Mr. Edge hits upon "slug burgers." Born of WWI rationing and the Depression, their patties feature soy-based extenders. In Oklahoma, he peels into the history of onion burgers, whose cooks smash onion rounds into the ground beef as it sizzles—again, another hardscrabble way of making the meat go further. Other regionalisms are easily understood, like the green-chile burgers of New Mexico or the bean burgers of San Antonio, Texas, that feature a slathering of refried beans and Fritos (which were, I learned, invented there).
Perhaps the most delicious-sounding burger to me, however, was the Jucy Lucy, found at Matt's Bar in Minneapolis. Essentially a slice of American cheese encased by two patties, Mr. Edge describes it thus: "... You will, upon first bite, taste a cheeseburger that does not follow the accepted protocols, but takes its cues from the choicer contents of a Whitman's Sampler box—say, a caramel-gorged fez of dark chocolate."
It's concise yet descriptive writing like that (the book is full of well-turned prose) that makes me want to hop the next plane to Minnesota and try a Jucy Lucy. But, thanks to the recipes included, I can grill up a knock-off at home—and will be doing so quite soon, I can assure you.
As I mentioned, Mr. Edge's writing is well-crafted, and it's fun. His book manages to give a deceptively thorough overview of the state of American hamburgery in a short, quick package that you can easily devour in the course of an evening.
HAMBURGERS & FRIES: AN AMERICAN STORY
Author: John T. Edge
Publisher: Putnam, 2005
Pages: 208 (hardcover)
Click here to buy it from Amazon
Photograph of John T. Edge by Kyle Hood
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 1, 2005 at 9:00 AM
Tiny hamburgers are just be too big to be confined to one week's worth of special coverage. This entry begins our second week of Tiny Hamburger Week on A Hamburger Today. — Ed.
Much more meaty than a White Castle burger could ever hope to be, Selling 'Em by the Sack is the history of the original tiny-hamburger chain and the history of the hamburger as well.
Shortly after mentioning this book last week, A Hamburger Today received a copy for review in the mail. We devoured it almost as quickly as a sack of Whitey's. While a tad more academic than entertaining, David Gerard Hogan's book is nonetheless fascinating and worth picking up for anyone interested in hamburger history. It is a must-read for White Castle fanatics.
Selling 'Em by the Sack details the rise of the hamburger as the defining "ethnic cuisine" of the American people in the 1920s. Before the Castle's rise, the burger was viewed as an icky, inferior food made from all the parts of a cow no one would eat. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, published in 1906, 15 years before the first Castle opened, wasn't the greatest endorsement of our favorite sandwich, either, what with its brutal look at the meatpacking industry in the early-twentieth-century United States. Mr. Hogan's book shows us how the Castle's founders, Edgar W. "Billy" Ingram and J. Walter "Walt" Anderson, used clever marketing, attention to detail, and novel business practices to elevate the burger in the eye of the American public. In so doing, they created the market for fast-food hamburgers and then dominated that market until the 1950s.
We learned some surprising facts about The White Castle System of Eating Houses, as the chain was officially called. Walt Anderson (at left in photo at left), for example, was an avid pilot who bought a fleet of biplanes to make impromptu quality checks at the far-flung garrisons of his empire. Mr. Ingram invented paper napkins and the paper hat that has long been associated with burger-joint employees. He then founded the Paperlynen Company as a subsidiary of the Castle; it supplied the chain with napkins, hats, and paper aprons and also made a tidy profit selling the same items to other foodmakers.
The book goes on to recount the Castle's near undoing during and after World War II (a labor shortage and changing wartime consumption habits cause the chain to falter) and then its resurrection thanks to a singleminded return to the founding principles of quality, cleanliness, and value.
I could go on and on about what a fascinating story this is, but I'm starting to bore myself here. If you're "one of us," that is, a Castle fan, put this book in your sack.
