The Hot Dog Bun
Much of the history of the hot dog and the roll on which it is customarily consumed is a mystery. Hot dogs themselves are called by many names, wieners, frankfurters, red hots, and so on. One such story is that the German immigrants of Cincinnati frequently ate their frankfurters on rolls as they sat in the city’s many beer gardens, referred to derisively by passer’s by as hot dogs due to their resemblance to dachshunds.
The term frankfurter is a reference to a German sausage known as a Frankfurter Wurst, made of pork, and given as part of the celebration of an Imperial Coronation as far back as that of Maximilian II. So something resembling a hot dog has been offered as sustenance to the crowd at large gatherings long before they became a popular American standby at sporting events.
The hot dog bun has multiple stories which claim to explain its invention. One of the most popular is that during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904, a local vendor was selling hot dogs accompanied with a white glove to protect the hand of the customer while eating the sausage. When many of the customers simply wandered off while wearing the gloves his wife suggested purchasing rolls from another vendor nearby, and passing the cost along to the customer. Some similar version of this tale applies to the earlier World’s Columbian Exposition, and other gatherings as well.
Another story gives the credit to Charles Feltman, a pieman at New York’s Coney Island. In 1869, after two years of selling pies from a pushcart, Feltman equipped another cart with a pot of hot water and a tray of buns. He sold frankfurters, which he called Coney Island Red Hots, so successfully that he eventually built a restaurant complex which attracted over five million people per year by the 1920s.
Feltman employed a bun slicer who became discontented with his employer, and was reportedly urged by Jimmy Durante – others say it was Eddie Cantor, others say both – to go into his own business and sell hot dogs at half Feltman’s price. The young man, whose name was Nathan Handwerker, did just that, selling his hot dogs for a nickel when he opened his first stand, which he called Nathan’s.