Gerald Cohen in "hot dog" article

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   It's almost July 4th--time to check the "hot dog" articles.  I located the Yale University "hot dog" in 1995.  It's now 2003, and my grand total of mentions in these articles remains...zero.
   And the hot dog in a bun--1904?  Yeesh.
   FYI, from LEXIS-NEXIS:


Copyright 2003 Scripps Howard, Inc.
Scripps Howard News Service

July 01, 2003, Tuesday

SECTION: LIFE STYLE

LENGTH: 882 words

HEADLINE: July 4 is not the same without the reliable hot dog

SOURCE: Scripps Howard News Service

BYLINE: RACHEL HARRIS

BODY:
If you ask Fort Pierce, Fla., resident Judy Jackson, there's only one way to do a dog.

"You have to have coleslaw," says Jackson, 65.

And mustard and chili. No beans, of course. ("That's how the Northerners like it," she says with a wink.) Jackson says the best hot dogs, though, come from her native West Virginia.

Unless you ask Bill Casey.

The self-named "Wiener King" and owner of Casey's Concessions in Jensen Beach, Fla., will tell it to you straight: "Connecticut's got the best hot dogs, and I should know: I'm from there."

Hometown tastes aside, the hot dog devoted defer on one point: There's nothing more American than a frankfurter fresh from the grill, especially on the Fourth of July. The American Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that more than 150 million hot dogs will be downed this Fourth.

After all, what other country celebrates its independence with a nationally televised hot dog eating contest? (Never mind that in five of the past six years, Japanese competitors claimed the mustard yellow belt in the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.)

"Hot dogs are more popular than ever," says Marc Goodwin, the owner of the Dune Dog Caf in Jupiter. "They're associated with family, fun and good times."

"It's something you grow up with," says Jackson. "Like chocolate chip cookies. It's soul food."

Hot dogs were popular long before the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile hit the road in 1935 and kids began wishing they were an Oscar Mayer wiener.

According to food historian James Trager, Julius Caesar introduced the art of sausage-making to Rome about 48 B.C. More than 800 years earlier, Homer penned references to sausages in the "Odyssey."

Taking its name from the Latin word for salt, sausage remained popular in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, when regions began to personalize their wurst and haggis and bangers.

When they came to America, immigrants brought their sausages, too, which might explain the regional differences in the American hot dog: the Baltimore Dog split and deep-fried, the Kansas City Dog topped with sauerkraut and cheese and the New York Dog swimming in steamed onions and pale yellow mustard sauce.

But the hotdog as we know it today - red hot, grilled and stuffed in a fluffy white bun - didn't happen overnight. In fact, it wasn't until 1904 that hotdogs were even served in buns, according to the book "The Hot Dog Companion," by David Graulich.

That year, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, a sausage vendor named Anton Ludwig Feuchtwanger sold his hot dogs with white gloves, so that patrons could enjoy their fare while strolling the fair - without any mess on their hands.

The problem was, no one returned the gloves, so Feuchtwanger asked his brother-in-law to create a soft roll that could hold the sausages. The hot-dog bun was born.

Historians dispute how frankfurters came to be known as "hot dogs." Common belief has it that New York sportswriter/cartoonist Thomas Dorgan made it up in 1901. The story is just a bunch of baloney, says language professor Gerald Cohen, of the University of Missouri. Instead, he credits students at Yale with inventing the phrase in the late 19th century.

Poking fun at a food cart near campus, the students called it the "dog cart" and said the sausages contained dog meat, a common American joke at the time.

Whatever its origin, the phrase "hot dog" was pretty mainstream by the 1920s, and in the '60s, surfers used the term to describe a new, flamboyant style.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals like to list pig lips, snouts and feet as top hotdog ingredients, but the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council says that's nothing but hogwash.

As spokeswoman Josee Meehan puts it: "The ingredients in hotdogs have often been the subject of humor, rumors and gossip. But hotdogs are made of the same meat you would find in your grocer's case." Which the council describes only as "select trimmings."

Its Web site tells it like this: The meat is ground into small pieces and placed in a mixer, where high-speed choppers blend it with spices, ice chips and curing ingredients.

The mixture then moves to an "automatic stuffer machine," which pushes it into casings, most of which are made of cellulose and later removed. (A few wieners are still made with natural casings - from animal intestines - that remain on the hot dog when eaten.)

Once the casings are filled, a machine links them in long strands, which are moved to a smokehouse and fully cooked. Then they are doused in cool water and stripped of cellulose casings.

The whole process, from meat trimmings to delivery trucks, takes only a matter of hours.

Most hot dog authorities don't dispute that franks aren't the healthiest food. An ordinary two-ounce hot dog can have 16 grams of fat.

"But people don't seem to care," says Barbara Murphy, owner of Angelo's Hot Dog World in Fort Pierce, Fla., which has been in business more than 25 years.

She dishes up at least 100 a day at the blue, red and white-colored trailer tucked behind a gas station on U.S. 1.

Casey also does a hopping hot dog business.

"It's all-American," he says of the wiener, "and it holds a lot of memories for people."

(Contact Rachel Harris of The Stuart News in Florida ar http://www.tcpalm.com.)