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Sunday 25 August 2013

Burger

Romans may have invented the burger. A recipe from the ancient Roman cookbook, Apicius, thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD, details a dish called ‘Isicia Omentata'. It was made with minced meat, pepper, wine, pine nuts and a rich fish-based sauce called garum.

Ground beef was developed by Mongolian and Turkic tribes known as Tartars who shred low-quality beef from Asian cattle to make it more edible and digestible.

The Tartars introduced the delicacy to their German trading partners from the port of Hamburg in the 13th century. The Germans flavoured it with regional spices such as onions and either ate it raw or fry the meat. It is becoming a standard meal for poorer classes and in Hamburg its acquired the name "Hamburg steak.”  Before that, ‘Hamburg steak’ was a term used for salt beef.

Calling ground beef a 'burger’ dates from the invention of mechanical meat grinders in the 1860s.

The first recorded sighting of the word 'cheeseburger' was on a 1928 menu for the Los Angeles restaurant O'Dell's. It listed a cheeseburger smothered with chili all for the price of 25 cents.


The world’s first lab-grown burger was eaten in London on August 5, 2013. Scientists took cells from a cow and turned them into strips of muscle that they combined to make a patty. Upon tasting the burger, Austrian food researcher Ms Ruetzler said: "It's close to meat, but it's not that juicy." The project is estimated to have cost £215,000.


The previous most expensive burger was the FleurBurger 5000 made of Kobe beef with foie gras and black truffles, served with a bottle of Chateau Pétrus 1990 for $5,000 at Fleur de Lys in Las Vegas.

The world record for eating a 9lb Big Daddy Cheeseburger is 27min 0sec by Sonya Thomas. Sonya Thomas also holds the record for eating seven 3/4lb ‘Thickburgers’ in 10 minutes.

A Burger King "Quad Stacker" cheeseburger, containing four patties and bacon

The world's biggest burger was served in Las Vegas, Nevada and called the Quadruple Bypass Burger. It was also noted down by the Guinness World Records as the world's most calorific burger.

The biggest cheeseburger ever made weighed 2,014 pounds. A Minnesota casino cooked it in 2012, and then gave it away to its guests for free.

As a result of a blending process that takes place after slaughter, the meat in an average single fast-food burger contains meat from 55 different cows.

Fifty billion burgers a year are eaten in the USA, which works out at an average of three a week for the average person (including all ages).

Over nine billion burgers are served at fast food outlets in the US every year.

Sources Daily Express, BBC

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