Sweet, sugary, salty, greasy, filling, sinfully delicious and atrocious for your waistline.
Yeah, whatever…
Fast Food doesn’t have a good reputation. And ever since the 1950s, it’s been blamed for everything from heart-attacks, strokes, diabetes and an increasing global girth.
Delightful.
But just how long has fast food been around? Where did it come from? And how did it take on the form which we know today? Put down your milkshakes, pick up your burgers, and let’s find out…
What is “Fast Food”?
Fast food, by definition, is any food which can be prepared quickly, cheaply, and eaten on the go. Generally, such food ain’t too good for you, on account of the fact that it’s usually full of crap that you probably shouldn’t eat.
…but it tastes so good.
Given this definition, how far back can we trace fast food? Fifty years? A hundred? Two? Three? A thousand or more? Hmm.
The First Fast Food
Fast Food as we might know it today has ancient roots. Literally. Places where you went for quick, cheap bites to eat, which were open to the public, and which provided prompt service for a paltry fee are surprisingly old. Ancient, in fact.
The first people who we know for certain operated fast food outlets were the same people responsible for underfloor heating, sports stadiums, running water and Rent-A-Chariot services – The Ancient Romans!
The Romans were busy people. And when you’re a busy Ancient Roman, going out conquering ancient lands, bringing back animals for the Colosseum or trying to invade Germania, you need cheap, filling meals. Enter fast food.
We know the Romans had fast food because such fast-food establishments have been found in Ancient Roman settlements, most notably, the wonderfully preserved city of Pompeii. So, what did the busy Roman eat?
Forget burgers and fries, Roman fast food was far simpler, and far more alcoholic.
Staples of Ancient Roman fast food included fried fish (but no chips), sausages (but no hotdogs), fried eggs, and bread rolls. To add flavour to their food, the Romans used…ketchup!
No, not really.
Instead, they used a festering fish-based sauce called garum. Garum (which is, shall we say, a matured fish sauce), was added to almost anything. It was incredibly potent and the ancient Romans loved it. And like Heinz Ketchup today, it was carted all over the Empire.
Ancient Romans didn’t have soda or milkshakes to quench their thirsts. Instead, they had…wine! And they loved it!
If you should find yourself suddenly transported to Ancient Pompeii and looking for a quick feed, these fast-food establishments were called cauponae, and in case you couldn’t find any, just look for the signs.
No, not the Golden Arches, this dude:
Anyone who is a connoisseur of fine wine ought to know who this is. And for those who don’t, meet Bacchus. Roman God of Wine! Along with his buddy Mercury (God of Commerce), paintings of this dynamic duo were often found in, or directly outside fast food joints in Ancient Rome. Praying to these Gods was seen as a way to ensure good business and fine wine.
Sadly, the glory days of Roman fast food died with the Empire. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 400s, almost everything that they had created was swept under the rug. Running water, paved roads, fancy robes, tiled rooves, central heating, indoor plumbing…even apartment-blocks! And for centuries, mankind had to survive on what he could grow, catch, kill or create. No quick and easy meals here.
At least, that was the case if you lived in the country.
If you were fortunate enough to live in a major city, such as London, Paris, Venice, or Rome, during the Middle Ages, you could still get fast food.
Don’t forget that during this period, cooking at home was relatively rare. If you were poor, you probably didn’t have a kitchen. Most people only had a fire, and a pot, and cooked whatever they could chuck into it. Actual kitchens were rare, and reserved for the wealthy. The money spent on building brick or clay stoves, the expense of firewood (which had to be bought if you couldn’t get it free), and the price of ingredients often made cooking at home prohibitively expensive.
The Increase of Fast Food
Fast Food of a sort has always been around in one form or another, because there will always be people who can’t, or won’t, cook for themselves. What constituted fast food depended on where you lived.
Coastal regions sold foods such as oysters. In fact, until the end of the 19th century, oysters were considered cheap, filling snacks in the United Kingdom. They were sold on the streets to working stiffs, or sold in public houses and taverns to the drunks. It wasn’t until uncontrolled pollution and over-fishing destroyed Britain’s oyster-beds that they started becoming the sought-after luxury item that we think of today.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, something happened called the Industrial Revolution. The massive increase in urban populations caused by the need for cheap labour to run factories and mills meant that suddenly, lots of people needed food! And most of these people couldn’t afford to cook at home. They either couldn’t, because they lived in tenements (which rarely had proper kitchens), worked long hours and slept whenever they could, or wouldn’t, because they didn’t know how.
To stop the masses of great cities like London from starving to death and dropping dead in the streets, fast-food vendors popped up all over town. People realised that a quick shilling could be made by selling cheap food to the masses. Welks, baked potatoes, oysters, sheep’s trotters, bowls of pease pudding, or pea soup, and other quick, cheap, hot, delicious, albeit, questionable delights were soon all over the place.
Questionable being the key word here. There were absolutely no food-safety laws in existence, and in 19th century Europe and America, a large amount of food sold to the unsuspecting public was adulterated, to make it last longer, increase bulk, or yield, or to make it look more appealing. Building-plaster was added to bread to increase its bulk and make it look really white. Paint was added to clumps of candlewax…toffee, anyone?
The Industrialisation of Fast Food
With the spread of railway networks in the 1800s, fast food got even faster, and cheaper. One of the most significant examples of this is Britain’s national dish – Fish and Chips.
For a long time, fish was rather expensive. It was expensive to catch, it was expensive to transport, it was expensive to store. But with the growth of railways, it was now possible for a fishing-boat to offload its catch, pack it into crates of ice, and send it to London by rail, where it would arrive within 24 hours!
This meant that the price of fish dropped significantly, and in 1860, England’s first fish-and-chip shop opened!
Once considered a poor man’s meal or a working stiff’s lunch, fish and chips gradually became acceptable fare for all classes of British society during the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, by the 1900s, fish and chips were SO popular, that they were one of the FEW things UNRATIONED during the Second World War (other unrationed foods included vegetables). That said, fish was pretty hard to get during the war. So even if it was off-ration, it wasn’t easy to find. Chips, on the other hand, were freely available – you were limited only by the number of potatoes that you could grow in your ‘Victory Garden’.
It was during the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution that many of our most favourite and desirable fast foods were created. More about that, later…
The Fast Food Restaurant
The notion of a fast-food restaurant, of the kind that we might recognise today, did not arrive until the early 20th century. Most would trace its origins back to about 1902, with the opening of the first “automatic restaurant”, in New York City.
The ‘automat‘ served fresh, hot meals in glass-fronted cabinets. The hungry diner simply walked up to the case, selected the dish he wanted, and fed coins into the slot next to the door. Once the price was paid, the door fell open, and the meal could be retrieved. The door was then closed, and the slot was marked for refilling. The empty slot in the cabinet was refilled with another meal, prepared fresh in the kitchens behind the display-cabinets.
A typical automat setup from the early 20th century
The automat remained one of the most popular forms of fast-food service in the United States until the 1960s. They eventually died out when it was no-longer economical to pay for full meals using loose change. Could you imagine trying to pay for a burger, fries, coke, chicken-nuggets and a slice of chocolate-cake by constantly feeding dimes or quarters into a machine, over, and over, and over again?
Branching off from the automat came the more familiar styles of fast-food restaurants which we know today.
The Burger Kings!
Fast-food restaurants which are familiar to us today had their origins in the early 20th century, and starting in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, many famous names were established, mostly in the United States.
In 1921, White Castle burger-restaurants opened their doors in the United States. The original Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its doors in 1930…in…Kentucky! But it would not become a franchise until 1952.
The most famous of all fast-food restaurants was opened in 1940. Originally run by a pair of brothers named Richard and Maurice McDonald.
I wonder what their restaurant was called?
The First McDonalds
Burger King was opened in 1954. Taco Bell and Subway followed in 1962, and 1965, respectively.
The Main Ingredients
Ask anyone the main components of a typical fast-food meal, and they’d probably say a burger, with fries, or a hotdog, or wedges, or pizza, or something of that nature. But where do they come from?
The Hamburger
The Hamburger comes from…Hamburg, Germany.
Or at least, the word itself does.
Originally “Hamburger” referred to someone from the German port city of Hamburg, just as how Londoner refers to someone from London, or Berliner, a person from Berlin.
The ancestors of the hamburger-sandwich date back almost to antiquity, but one of the first dishes to share the name, and not just some vague similarity, might be the “Hamburgh Sausage“. A recipe for this sausage is mentioned in a book written by English cook, Hannah Glasse, in her famous tome: “The Art of Cookery (Made Plain and Easy)“, from 1763. However, the resultant dish is more of a large sausage, rather than a meat-patty sandwich.
It’s believed that the hamburger may have another ancestor – the Steak Tartare! In this form, ground up, or minced beef recipes immigrated from Russia to the German port of Hamburg during the 1600s. However, neither England, Germany, nor Russia can lay claim to being the birthplace of the hamburger-sandwich.
No. The prize goes to the Americans.
Hamburg was a major port during the 19th century, and large numbers of German and European immigrants to the New World would board steamships departing from Hamburg, bound for ports such as New York. To make a quick buck off hungry German sailors who docked in America, American cooks started making “Hamburg-style” steaks, using the ground-up beef patties which the Germans had inherited from the Russians. They’re similar to the more familiar Salisbury Steaks, but with slightly different ingredients.
From a Hamburg Steak to a hamburger-sandwich was the simple step of…sandwiching…the ground up steak between two slices of bread, or in later years, two halves of a bun.
Exactly WHO created the hamburger as we know it today is unknown. There are loads of conflicting stories, but its creation in America is the one thing that we do know for certain.
French Fries!
Aah. French Fries! Viva La France!
Idiots…can’t have a burger without fries! But to get the authentic thing, you should go to Paris…right?
Wrong.
Sorry folks. French Fries are not actually French! They never were! French Fries actually have their origins in that little country just to the north of France. It’s called Belgium. Most people think that the Belgians only make chocolates, but no, they make fries, too!
But if they originate in Belgium…why are they called French Fries?
It’s believed that they received this name due to the manner in which thin slices or sticks of potato were prepared. They were fried in the “French Style”, meaning that they were cooked in a vat of hot, bubbling oil. Today, we’d call that deep-frying. Originally, they would’ve been “French-fried Potatoes”, meaning potatoes fried in the French manner. In time, the ‘potatoes’ was dropped off, and the term shortened, leaving us with just ‘French Fries’.
However, if you go to France, or Belgium, for that matter, and asked for French Fries, there is still a chance that people wouldn’t understand you. French Fries aren’t called French fries in Belgium. Or Belgian fries, for that matter. They’re called Flemish fries! Try getting your head around that mess…
Hotdogs!
Mustard? Ketchup? Onion-rings? Cheese? Relish?
What do you put on your hotdogs? Or do you eat them plain? Have you ever wondered where they came from?
Who invented the hotdog, a sausage wedged inside a bun, is unknown. But the sausages which make up the meat in these tubular sandwiches, like the Hamburger before them, came from Germany.
Not for nothing are sausages also called Frankfurters, or Wieners. That’s because the varieties of sausages used in hotdogs came from the German city of Frankfurt, or from the capital city of Austria, Vienna. Vienna also gave us another delicious nibble – the Wiener Schnitzel!
Although it is unknown who invented the hotdog, historical records tell us that they have existed since at least the last quarter of the 19th century, and were first sold in New York City, starting in the 1870s.
That said, hotdogs were not called hotdogs in the 1870s. Although ‘dog’ had been a common nickname for sausages since the 1880s, the complete phrase ‘hotdog’ did not make its first appearance in the English language until the 1890s. Fred Shapiro, the editor of a number of publications detailing the histories of famous quotes, words and phrases, could trace the word ‘hotdog’ back no further than 1892.
Milkshakes
I don’t care who you are. Everyone loves milkshakes! But where do they come from?
Milkshakes in their present form, being a drink made of milk, ice-cream/cream, sugar, fruits and other delicious additives, date back to roughly the same time as the hotdog, the 1880s-1900s. They received the name ‘milkshake’ because prior to the spread of easily-accessed electricity (and the subsequent invention of the electric blender/mixer), milkshakes were quite literally shaken by hand. The ingredients were added into a metal cup, which was then sealed. The whole concoction was then shaken up, much like a cocktail-shaker, and then the drink was served.
With the invention of proper milkshake blenders in the early 1900s, milkshakes became wildly popular, and there were (and still are) countless varieties out there. Peak time for milkshakes was during the postwar “Long Boom”, of the 1950s and 60s. Teenagers flocking to drugstores, corner shops, and cafes, theatres and drive-in cinemas made the drink extremely popular – a popularity that has never waned.
Ketchup!
Mmm, ketchup! Rich, sweet, tangy, slightly sweet sauce, that goes well with almost anything.
But what is it?
The word ‘ketchup‘ originally referred to any sort of slightly-thickened, slightly sweet table-sauce. It could be made out of almost anything! Mushroom ketchup, oyster ketchup…How about Banana ketchup? That was invented in the Philippines during the Second World War, when rationing made it impossible to obtain the necessary tomatoes. Sauce-makers simply removed the crushed tomatoes and added pureed bananas to the mix, instead!
Ketchup as we know it today, tomato ketchup, or tomato-sauce as it’s called outside the ‘States, is generally made of crushed tomatoes, vinegar, salt and sugar, thickened or flavoured with the addition of other spices or herbs.
But where does the word ‘ketchup’ come from?
Believe it or not, it’s Chinese.
‘Ketchup’ was originally a sauce used for flavouring fish-dishes. It was called “Gui Zhi“, in Chinese, or more familiarly – “Gwai-Zap“, in Cantonese. Eventually, the Cantonese pronunciation (from the south of China) won out, and the words eventually morphed from the Canto “Gwai-Zap”, to…Ketchup.
Ketchup was invented in China sometime in the 1600s. It migrated across Asia and Europe thanks to the Silk Road, arriving in England by the end of the century. Originally, it was called “Catchup”, but the more familiar ‘ketchup’ had replaced this spelling by the early 18th century.
Ketchup used to be homemade. And indeed, even after commercial varieties were available, some people continued to make it at home. There’s a memorable scene in the 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis” (set from 1903-1904), where Mrs. Smith and Katie the cook are trying to make up a batch of ketchup in the family kitchen – only for every other member of the Smith family to find some reason to suggest altering the recipe!
The most famous brand of ketchup is of course, Heinz Ketchup. 57 varieties of it! Heinz started making ketchup in 1876, and it became wildly popular. By the start of the 20th century, it was being exported all over the world.
The Rise of the Fast Food Restaurant
The “Long Boom” of the 1950s and 60s saw the number of fast-food restaurants rise dramatically, and spread around the world. Everything from corner drugstores and diners, to large, purpose-built fast-food outlets. The rise of institutions like drive-in cinemas and increased movie-watching also spurred on the rise of fast-food. Sales of pizza, fish-and-chips, burgers, fries, soft-drinks, ice-cream and hotdogs all shot up in popularity, all gradually contributing to the fast-food culture which we have in the 21st century. Whoever complained that fast food was a scourge of modern living, however, would be very wrong indeed. Fast Food in one way or another, has always existed, and probably always will.
Hungry for More?
http://www.globusjourneys.in/fast-food-in-pompeii.aspx