This article is about the dish. For the meat served as part of such a dish, see Patty. This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s turkey patties in oven standards. The specific problem is: article needs a thorough going over for copyedit, citations, extraneous information, unencyclopedic writing, original research.

A hamburger, or simply burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The term burger can also be applied to the meat patty on its own, especially in the United Kingdom, where the term patty is rarely used or can even refer to ground beef. Hamburgers are typically sold at fast-food restaurants, diners, and specialty and high-end restaurants. There are many international and regional variations of hamburgers. Hamburg steak has been known as “Frikadelle” in Germany since the 17th century.

The “Hamburger Rundstück” was popular already in 1869 and is believed to be a precursor to the modern Hamburger. As versions of the meal have been served for over a century, its origin remains ambiguous. There is a reference to a “Hamburg steak” as early as 1884 in the Boston Journal. On July 5, 1896, the Chicago Daily Tribune made a highly specific claim regarding a “hamburger sandwich” in an article about a “Sandwich Car”: “A distinguished favorite, only five cents, is Hamburger steak sandwich, the meat for which is kept ready in small patties and ‘cooked while you wait’ on the gasoline range. The origin of the hamburger is unclear, though “hamburger steak sandwiches” have been advertised in U. New York to Hawaii since at least the 1890s. The invention of hamburgers is commonly attributed to various people, including Charlie Nagreen, Frank and Charles Menches, Oscar Weber Bilby, Fletcher Davis, or Louis Lassen.

One of the earliest claims comes from Charlie Nagreen, who in 1885 sold a meatball between two slices of bread at the Seymour Fair now sometimes called the Outagamie County Fair. According to White Castle, Otto Kuase was the inventor of the hamburger. In 1891, he created a beef patty cooked in butter and topped with a fried egg. German sailors would later omit the fried egg. The family of Oscar Weber Bilby claims the first-known hamburger on a bun was served on July 4, 1891, on Grandpa Oscar’s farm.

The bun was a yeast bun. Frank and Charles Menches claim to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in 1885 in Hamburg, New York. During the fair, they ran out of pork sausage for their sandwiches and substituted beef. Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas claimed to have invented the hamburger. According to oral histories, in the 1880s, he opened a lunch counter in Athens and served a ‘burger’ of fried ground beef patties with mustard and Bermuda onion between two slices of bread, with a pickle on the side.

Various non-specific claims of the invention relate to the term “hamburger steak” without mention of its being a sandwich. The first printed American menu which listed hamburger is said to be an 1834 menu from Delmonico’s in New York. However, the printer of the original menu was not in business in 1834. 313 Pacific Street in San Fernando, California. It cost 10 cents—the same price as mutton chops, pig’s feet in batter, and stewed veal.

It was not, however, on the dinner menu. Only “Pig’s Head,” “Calf Tongue,” and “Stewed Kidneys” were listed. Due to widely anti-German sentiment in the U. World War I, an alternative name for hamburgers was Salisbury steak.