ramble hey nicole hey josh is uh is a hot dog a sandwich oh no you said it now we have to debate it this is a hot dog as a sandwich or is it ketchup is a smoothie yeah i put ice in my cereal so what that makes no sense hot dog is a sandwich a hot dog is a sandwich welcome to our podcast a hot dog is a sandwich the show we break down the world’s biggest food debates except for we haven’t actually broken down the world’s biggest food debate i’m your host joshua and i’m your host nicole and iady and nicole today we’re doing the damn thing we’re doing it we are doing it we are going to try and finally end the debate of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich and i know what you’re saying daunting tasks daunting task and also the podcast is called a hot dog it is yes but that is not an endorsement and we don’t really care about that no no no not at all very confusingly clear that we could have equally called the podcast uh there were other front runner names like edible arguments but that sounded like edible arrangements and i hate edible arrangements yeah wait no hold on we’ll save that debate for another time i once ate a 90 edible arrangement for dinner and it was absolutely fantastic uh butter into the hot knife butter and the hot knife i’m butter i’m the hot knife no silly oh you’re you’re a hot knife and i’m butter point is hot dog is a sandwich uh it was just a clever name yeah it’s on a debate that a lot of people know but you and i have never touched this freaking thing because it’s too popular right yeah and like i don’t think that we’re like equipped to do so no and and so many people have tried to answer it but i don’t think anyone’s done a great job and you have a lot of people on that list you got like john hodgman did it uh with dan paschman from the sparkful uh will smith came out with a video yeah a huge tick tock oh huge tick tock ruth bader ginsburg colbert asked ruth bader ginsburg and there were literally headlines or people like ruth bader ginsburg said a hot dog is a sandwich but she actually didn’t even say that she said steven according to your definition of a sandwich a hot dog would be a sandwich and so that said this is something that i don’t think anyone has done a great job of bringing down and i think we should do that and i think we’re equipped to do that i think we’re going to find people to help us get to that answer certainly certainly so we for the next five weeks five whole weeks god our brains are gonna turn to absolute our brains are gonna turn into hot dogs we’re just gonna pipe them into a little lamb casing and then them uh but we are talking to four different experts to try and really break down the bones of this argument first up we just had a conversation with historian ken albala great guy great guy we are both huge fans dude’s written like 25 books yeah to try and get to you know the origins of where’s history of a hot dog even being called a sandwich where sandwich comes from where hot dog comes from super interesting it’s important to know the history before you get into it and then next up we are talking to dr calvin normore he is a philosopher and a professor of metaphysics and credible philosophy at ucla and we’re going to try and learn the sort of bones of the argumentation process right correct we’re actually talking about when we say a hot dog is a sandwich and then next up we got lawyer alexander park of course who wrote a who wrote a piece for the minnesota law review arguing that the government needs to take a stronger definition of what a sandwich is and so i am really fascinated by that to see how it actually plays out into the legal system yeah of course they’re responsible for classifying a lot of things a lot of things but then finally nicole we are talking to cupid’s hot dog owner morgan walsh the roller skating sausage maven herself uh she owns a chain of uh hot dog restaurants in los angeles that i’m a huge fan of same and we’re gonna see how it actually affects the day-to-day business of somebody who works with hot dogs for a living exactly yeah finally nicole we’re going to be talking directly to the people that’s right you the people you deserve to be heard that’s right we’re going out to the streets so everyone make sure you’re following us on social media we might be showing up to your door we might want to be hearing directly from you we’re going to go old fashioned with it billy eichner just yelling at people knocking on doors what you think just going to go canvassing like excuse me ma’am do you have four minutes to talk about our lord and savior hot dogs and yeah i i’m i’m ready um i mean do you think we can end it i think we’re gonna try our damnedest and that’s the most important thing we’re gonna try as hard as we possibly can to end this debate if if i’m being honest i don’t think we i think we will convince four people in the world but i think the most important person that it’s going to end the debate for is myself sure this is a personal quest for me and i hope you feel invested into course yeah i i fully expect to come out of this with a hard answer to have every single piece of evidence and information to back it up in my own mind because right now i mean we have to go into this with an open mind right yeah but i do have some feelings a little bit of course yeah can i share right now my feelings yeah heart of hearts right now hot dog is a sandwich a hot dog is not a sandwich it’s just not it’s not it’s just not it’s just not it’s just not i don’t feel like a hot dog is a sandwich what do you think no i i i understand the argument i’ve heard all the arguments before or at least so i think um i fully believe that a hot dog is a sandwich of course right i’m a hard liner i’ve always said that for years um the conversation with ken certainly god posed a lot of points out there um but that said it’s a it’s meat bread it’s a prototype of a sandwich dude what’s not sandwichy about it but that said i’m open to having a world rocked let’s get into the meat of this let’s rock our world let’s get our world rocked ken welcome man thank you so much for joining us well thanks for having me i really like the picture behind you because i think it answers the question that you’re gonna spend an hour going through is a hot dog a sand a sandwich and the picture clearly indicates no it is not well hold on i mean that’s this is a hot dog sandwich as it were on the picture it’s been the logo of the podcast and we called the podcast a hot dog is a sandwich not because either of us actually believe that’s hot dog’s a sandwich but just to be like referential to the biggest food debate out there exactly we’ve never actually talked about this before and the reason we’ve never talked about this before is because we didn’t think that we actually had the mental faculties to answer it because it’s like straight up refused you know what i mean yeah i was i was never planning on answering it but then josh had a really good pitch like hey let’s find out and i’m like okay let’s explore this and so ken that’s where you come in yeah we’re hoping that you and all of your food history accolades could help us at least get the base context on how to answer this question because we know it’s a really long journey sure thing so i mean first off uh i have a bio written for you but you are in the unique position where you have done too many things to possibly fit in a podcast host bio do you want me to just read it and try try i think okay okay this is i had to boil it down i really did kennel bala is a food historian and history professor at the university of the pacific he’s authored or edited more than 25 books about food including multiple encyclopedias about food he’s an iacp award winner and has done way too many things for me to possibly cover right now ken how did that sound that sounds great yeah also sidebar you and i are part of a very special facebook group called show me your ass pics we are totally cool and you you’ve just like done so many amazing that book is coming out eminently so i am just turned in the final final proofs yesterday afternoon oh my gosh congratulations it looks really cool yeah it would be fun so it literally came out of that conversations in that podcast yeah one time uh i we made a jello bagel for uh the show we work on that’s right good mythical morning and then you recreated it in a way that uh i could have never uh wrapped my head around so thank you for that that’s fine all right back to the question at hand ken have you given any thought to this question is a hot dog a sandwich is that something that has crossed your mind before sure i mean it’s it’s been out there for quite a long time and people have been worrying about it i’m not sure why it’s not a productive you know part of society it’s not one of the social questions people have burning in their minds but i think it’s um i think because people like defining things um what originally spurred this on was was just taxation sure the state of new york and i think another state also decided that for taxation purposes they would classify hot dogs with sandwiches for convenience not because they were making a philosophical statement or anything but it caused a lot of people to question is it really does this make sense should it be its own category so it’s so it’s been a fun question to think about well so do you think that the impetus to answer it is just because of that taxation or do you think that there’s like something larger about society that says that you know we love putting things in categories and also that we hold certain things like hot dogs very near and dear to our hearts well that’s part of it it’s a quintessentially american food and we like arguing about it but i think also is that it’s such an absurd question because you asked anyone and their answer is no of course not a hot dog is a hot dog whoa whoa whoa what yeah i think i think the people who are trying to claim it’s a sandwich are trying to cause trouble everyone knows it’s it’s of course a hot dog everyone knows that so you are coming swinging right out the gates that you believe in your heart of hearts and do you think that history can like verify that or do you think this is a historical argument really i don’t think it has any validity whatsoever i think even even if you talk philosophically or historically there’s no way a hot dog is should be even thought of as a sandwich like the two ideas and that’s why it’s gotten so much traction is because it’s patently absurd whoa i have chills right now hold on no i have actual chills because i did not see this going ken i agree with you so wholeheartedly right now like i feel like you have just you’ve you’ve cracked it in such a concise even way that i couldn’t even put into it okay wait wait hold on hold on before i really get into it because this is one of the reasons i wanted to talk to ken was to try and see if we can pinpoint the exact moment in time okay at which hot dogs and sandwiches actually came to be because i think that’s important ken if you will just humor me for a minute because sure but let me say from the outside i don’t think it’s not a question that can be answered okay okay and i think for most people when they look at food history they go where is the first sure hot dog and and there never is it almost never happens unless it’s something like a twinkie where you know it’s a brand name and someone actually invented it and everything marketed it such but that never happened with a hot dog and there are you know half a dozen equally plausible claims that happen in the late 19th century um none of them are you know proven uh it’s this world’s fair or another world’s fair it’s charles feldman and coney island it’s whenever you know but that’s the wrong question to answer i think you know you what you really want to know i think what’s the important question is why hot dogs are so important in american culture why we love them so much that’s fascinating um who was the first person to do it i’m sure it predates the late 19th century fought by far you know it’s it’s a european thing really yeah to start well i i fully agree with you that we talk about all the time in this podcast that any food origin story is likely completely bunk yeah right sure and so especially i mean not even the hot dog because you mentioned um there’s the famous origin story of the 1904 world’s fair in st louis uh the hot dog or the sausage vendor uh is serving sausages and he was apparently serving them with white gloves but then he rambled for one you’d get the grease on the gloves and then you’d have to hand them back to the person that is the dumbest story i’ve ever heard and if you look at it you know if you look at the way they ha hot dogs in frankfurt where frankfurters come from they just pick it up with their hands and you don’t they’re not greasy you know you dip it in sauce you eat it it’s very very easy to do um a hot dog doesn’t need a bun so that story is kind of like the you know you got peanut butter in my chocolate kind of the accidental dropping of chips into the batter to make chocolate chip cookies well nonsense yeah it’s one of my favorite ones is we are in los angeles uh supposedly the origin of the french dip and there’s two restaurants about a mile apart that claim to have invented it and literally the origin of where the term french comes from is completely different in both them one says that there was a police officer named officer french and he was physically arresting a man when the sandwich maker dropped his sandwich into the ojoo and he said i’m in a hurry i gotta go arrest this man give me that wet sandwich and then the other one says that it was an actual french baker who did it and so if you can’t even agree on that but that said i mean i think the the pr behind this is a huge part of the story absolutely yeah i think i think that’s the quintessential thing that we’re trying to decide why right now at this current time is the sentence the question a hot dog gives a sandwich such a big deal yeah yeah i hear that and a lot of like uh i think there’s actually big business implications yeah in it right and i think because i’m coming at this with the bias that i believe a hot dog is a sandwich and i believe it’s patently absurd for people to not think it’s a sandwich that’s my own thing because i believe that of course you have to really define what a sandwich is first and if you and if you’re gonna take the clue the cue that a sandwich is some kind of processed meat or cooked meat whatever it is on two pieces of bread then a hot dog doesn’t qualify immediately so it’s one piece of bread split open and if you do try and put a ham a hot dog on two pieces of bread you have what like in your picture that doesn’t work it rolls out it squishes i hate that he’s using our logo against us ken it’s such a good graphic and i think if you did want to make a hot dog sandwich i would totally approve of this you’d have to slice the hot dog really thin into very thin layers layer it across the bread or cut it in little circles put it on the bread and then you’d have a sandwich that’s a hot dog a hot dog sandwich but but if you ever were to show someone a hot dog well let’s imagine you went into us to a friend’s house and he said oh i’m having sandwiches would you like a sandwich and they brought you a hot dog wouldn’t you be disappointed i don’t know that i would be and i also feel like we need more philosophical tools to be able to unpack this one right here because i believe that’s called the equivocation fallacy right or no not the equivocation straw man i believe that’s the strongest fallacy ken we’re trying to do our best here but we’re both kind of done so this is this is the normative use of language and philosophers use this all the time is that if something is commonly understood to be x then philosophically it’s it’s accepted and if you try and introduce something else that’s not x into that quotient then that’s okay you know you that that’s perfectly valid argument that if someone would never call something that and let me let me give you an a close but a similar example is that hamburgers when they started were called sandwiches they were hamburger sandwiches yeah but it’s not anymore i agree with you now you say hamburger would you like a hamburger no one in their right mind would say would you like a hamburger sandwich no it’s a hamburger it’s its own thing that’s right and so the language and the concept has shifted and that’s perfectly okay um hot dog was never sandwich no one ever called it that and so why we would suddenly try to stuff it into that category is is kind of just silly that’s very interesting because i’ve heard that they’re actually philosophical not philosophical i’ve heard that there are historical records of the original hot dogs being called sandwiches i mean dating back to even in like the the 1830s of it being called a dog sandwich or a hot dog sandwich do you know anything about that 1830s sounds way way too early but um but i think maybe when it was first introduced people didn’t know what it was and so they had to categorize it yeah to put it in the category but there are things like this and let me give you a weird example if you go to vienna they do have something that looks very very much like a hot dog they do it slightly differently rather than slice the long bun open they have a long metal prod and they just poke a hole in the whole thing put the mustard inside stick the hot dog inside so it’s completely cased in bread put the top on and you bite it and eat it and it’s it is pretty much a hot dog you know yeah you would never call that a sandwich that sounds like fun that just sounds like a good friday night you call a sausage roll you know in england they have a sausage it’s not a sandwich okay even though it’s very close to a hot dog i found the citation i found this like shattered rain on my nose there’s an uh 1843 obituary of baker ignatz frischmann who was a baker in new york uh who supposedly baked rolls to supply to sausage vendors and the quote says a bologna sausage or two with a piece of bread would be of advantage to those whose appetite might lead them to partake of a spurious dog sandwich okay so what you’re talking about there is something very different let me explain yeah so here so here you go so what makes a hot dog a hot dog and not a sausage it’s a type of sausage sure but it’s got a very very finely ground um filling which is actually called a batter because of the way it’s like usually they put ice in so it gets that kind of spongy texture it’s a very modern invention you can do it by pounding it and adding ice but it takes hours so so a hot dog is kind of a modern invention in that case the very same batter makes bologna which we call which comes from bologna right which they they’re called mortadella it’s the same kind of batter it’s just that one goes into a bung which is an enormous enormous casing it’s the cecum in a cow so you get this really wide slice if you can make it smaller and smaller and smaller you get a hot dog which is in a sheep casing so you can eat the casing and everything but bologna what they’re referring to in that quote is a bologna sandwich is baloney just a hot dog or is it a bean hot dog a hot dog is just a small balloon in theory if a person were large enough and and in german they call it that they call it vertian you know verstehen it just means a little little baloney little worse this is so much fun oh my god i feel like an abundance of knowledge has been poured into my ear i’m having a great time i still have more questions i’m still not convinced i’m not i am not giving up my god at this point because let’s let’s go to the claim that a sandwich is two slices of bread and just can just block our logo out of your view right now don’t look at this okay but let’s let’s go to the claim that a sandwich with two slices of bread okay do you leaven bread i mean was invented uh ten thousand plus years ago correct more than that yeah yeah and i mean can you go into the history of 11 brand it was the was it the mesopotamians or fertile crescent well no we we commonly think that bread was um invented with agriculture when we started growing wheat but in fact people gathered wild wheat and pounded it and made it into flatbreads and there’s probably 11 breads also but way before 1000 bc before the so-called neolithic revolution so if you were to have a you know let’s imagine you kill a an animal and you have a flat bread and you stick the piece of that into the flatbread and fold it over okay is that a sandwich it’s not really but it’s but it’s because it’s one piece of bread it’s not too it’s not sliced it’s not put into a sandwich so when you think of pita and and falafel do you say a falafel sandwich you say i call it a pita i just call it a falafel pizza yeah yeah because it’s a pocket or it’s folded or it’s you know do you and there’s things like that all over the world in italy that’s called the piada in in you know all through the middle east if you if you get to china they take the same kind of dough and they steam it but they put the meat inside so bao is is that a sandwich it’s meat inside bread but why if that if if a hot dog’s a sandwich then a bow is a sandwich oh hold on hold on i think there’s distinct differences though in cookery between like say bao and a hot dog whereas to me a bao could be in the classification of dumpling and this all goes to like taxonomy right like genus versus species what about the like peeking duck bows the ones that are folded over which is oh is that what you’re referring to because that’s what i thought about my brain no no that’s that well they call that mistakenly a pancake but that’s but it’s not risen it’s just a flat kind of noodle oh you’re not trying to wrap peeking duck is the flat crepe what am i the steamed bun the white the white fluffy bun well so there’s two different kinds of steamed bun right so like if you’re nicole’s thinking of guac guabal which is like belly buns yeah yeah that are very popular where the bun is cooked separately and then the meat is tucked inside but then there’s also a different type of bow that is steamed together with the uncooked meat inside right and so we see how murky the waters are here of course yeah but yeah no i i feel you can if a hot dog is a sandwich then i think god oh no i’m not going to shoot myself wait a minute wait wait wait wait but then you’ve got to say ravioli is a sandwich oh hold on but i believe i believe too i don’t want to either i’m going to drag this out to its logical conclusion but is that any meat between two pieces of some kind of dough why does it matter if it’s baked or boiled must then be a sandwich [Music] nicole imagine a skid mark okay i’m imagining it great now tell me how you visualize cleaning it up well uh first i’m wrong you were gonna say wipe it off with toilet paper weren’t you 100 incorrect wait what kind of skid mark are you talking about you’re gonna want to wash everything off down there with water for the best clean and that’s where the tushy bidet comes in oh those skid marks yup poop stop smearing your business around with toilet paper and start washing with water with a hello tushy bidet the hello tissue bidet attachment is great it installs to your toilet in under eight minutes and you don’t need an electrician or plumber to get the job done once attached simply spray and pat dry it cuts down toilet paper use by 80 percent so not only does a tushy bidet save money and paper waste it can save your butt from skid marks not speaking from personal experience but kinda so make the restroom your best room with a complete tissue system including the tushy bidet attachment ottoman and toilet brush yo you ever just wake up scratching your butthole that’s not rhetorical you ever no yeah i don’t know it’s weird hello tushy has cleaned over one million happy butts join them and take care of your business the cleaner way we want all of our listeners to have clean butts visit hellotushy.com hotdog to get 10 off plus free shipping right now tag us and at hellotushi on social media so we can celebrate your clean butt with you that’s hellotushy.com hotdog for 10 off i think something that is important here is leavening and so i would i would say i i’ve created my own sort of definition of a sandwich which is which is very loose but i think it is any sort of filling that is between leavened bread right i don’t think it has to be meat even a pie a pie is actually there are pies that can be counted sandwiches right well hold on i mean like like a puff pastry on the top of a like chicken pot pie and the pie comes out or like a cornish pasty cornish pasty is meat in the middle it’s a it’s 11 it can definitely be 11 bread um it’s you know and then you’re eating it like just like a hot dog in fact then a cornish pasty has got to be a sandwich also good news i have added more layers to my definition of a sandwich i believe it has to be i believe it has to be chemically leavened bread i don’t believe mechanical evidence such as butter no puff pastry what about mechanical openers but bread is not chemically leavened that’s yeast well i mean uh risen is not a chemical leveler isn’t it no it’s it’s a living creature good news i’ve updated my definition of attack okay you need to update it again no chemical levelers means baking powder oh coffee okay so something either yeast or uh sodium bicarbonate based leavening agent and the bread must be cooked separately from the filling because otherwise i think we’re in pie town well then calzone by your definition would not be a sandwich lemon bread and it’s fried and it’s got cheese and meat and stuff inside of it correct but you can take the same dough fry it and fold it over meat is that a sandwich oh that’s a sandwich that’s that’s the sandwich at that point i believe it’s a yummy little nibble if you ask me because they do serve those like in northern italy milan you get a flat bread that’s got meat in it and you fold it over and that comes close to being very close to being a sandwich that’s the thing ken can join the dark side it’s join the dark side here well i mean the hinge is throwing us off the bread hinge is throwing me off at least okay so i i have another question about the uh two slices of bread idea being central to a sandwich because i’ve never believed that and i know the dictionary definition which one i don’t believe that should be the end-all be-all of what we’re going off oxford english dictionary i believe specifies two slices of bread but there are several other dictionaries that do not specify that uh the usda does not specify two slices of bread right for their definition of a sandwich and if you look at something like say subway i mean subway is the largest restaurant chain in the history of the world more locations than mcdonald’s i think 711 might be the only thing that has it beat but i mean subway i would consider a purveyor of sandwiches ken would you say that they’re called a sandwich chain even though what they’re serving are actually subs a sub is a different thing it’s a subset it’s a subset literally of sandwiches because when you take a long roll and you put cold cuts in it it serves the exact same function of you know of a sandwich so and you’re putting cold cuts so it’s like you know ham or salami and cheese and stuff like that and it’s and it that is somewhere between a sandwich but we do and the the i think the real truth of that is that we’re so confused about how to categorize it that every place calls it something different it’s a sub in new york it’s a grinder in philadelphia it’s a whole new interest there you go it’s such a confusing thing to us to to make a what is a sandwich on a long roll and then slice it ken it doesn’t have to be it doesn’t have to be confusing just lean in it’s all a sandwich it’s a sub sandwich i am so uh inundated with information that my brain is like i’m like my eyes are starting to glaze over but it’s like i’m we’re still retaining all the information we have like four more episodes i know this is just the tip of the iceberg you don’t get it like my brain is like kind of in like uh not disassociation mode or anything but like i’m just retaining so much information and i’m having so much fun that i’m just like blank and i’m ready oh no we can’t handle it ken we can’t handle another purple i’m ready so we use this term conventionally and uniformly one slice of bread something on top is an open-faced sandwich and throughout scandinavia it’s a sandwich it’s a slice of bread you could put cheese on it or pickled herring or whatever but it’s a sandwich but here’s the real difference is a sandwich i think by definition has to you have to be able to pick it up and you can’t pick up an open a sandwich you have to take it up no no no no i can pick it up in scandinavia they they use a knife and fork scandinavia i use my hand and i go no you do not and you know how i know you do not because the last time the last time you ate an open-faced sandwich was at lancers deli and you got a you got a hot beef open face sandwich ken this is a deli that is pre-dates time in burbank california and they’re hot beef sandwiches it’s a slice of wonder bread with just the saltiest brownest gravy you’ve ever had cider mashed potatoes jelly sliced roast beef cider vegetables and nicole you could not have picked that up if you tried that’s that’s because of the that’s because of the gravy but if i had if i had a piece of toast with a little bit of with a smear of cream cheese a little bit of dill a few little you know a little squeeze of lemon juice i pick that up and i eat it and i can that’s that’s not okay all right because you have a slice of toast and you’re just eating it i agree with you supposed to sit if i toast two pieces of bread is now that a sandwich if you stuff them together yes i fully agree with ken on this point actually so now ken i’m glad we can just gang up on nicole here nicole man this always happens at the end no no so i don’t believe that an open face sandwich is a sandwich and i think this is an interesting convention of language i think that the term open face the adjective is actually negating the sandwich hood in the same way that fool’s gold is not gold right the term exactly is telling you exactly what it’s not and i believe that’s the same with open-facing is the point of an open-faced sandwich to put the two pieces together no that’s just a sandwich yeah well no the the point is is that i say if you were to put them together you’d have a sandwich when they’re open it’s like saying a flightless bird well it’s still a bird but it’s not really you know it doesn’t go off yeah but i agree with you it gates oh the very fact you have to say open face means it’s really something else and that’s just a weakness of our language we used to have a word for that we called them sops a sop like in a soup oh you’d have a sop you would stop up the stuff we use the verb but we don’t call that sops anymore you’d be able to take a slice of bread put a stew on it or meat or whatever whatever it was we just lost that word in english we’re going to bring it back on this podcast sops used to be they would put them in in wine as well right is that the same yeah totally or milk yeah and that’s where the term toast comes from right yeah yeah wow this is so fun i just nickel next time you get a glass of wine in a restaurant just take the bread and throw it in there and go well actually in the middle ages i think i did that in a wine cave in germany i’m like 85 percent sure i did that okay i have i haven’t okay let’s let’s get into the absolutely false origin myth of the sandwich or maybe you believe this is true the earl of mob no it’s it’s no totally made up it’s rabbi hillel right well rabbi hillel has a pretty good claim because you know the in the you know what happened with that is that the there’s this this is the passover seder where you put some charoset which is this chopped up fruit and stuff and some horseradish between two pieces of matzah and the maxwell house company that made the haggadah called it a hillel sandwich they made that up there’s not no no historical you know do you not believe that hillel the elder actually did that because it’s one it’s a powerful metaphor you know for consuming all the the the tears and the pain and the happiness together well actually okay so can you can you just uh can you kind of recount can you recount the the earl of sandwich john montague myth for us because i think they’re i think the list so there’s a story that that the orella sandwich and sandwich is in the east uh far east coast southeast coast of england he had that title he never came from there but apparently he was an avid gambler and he didn’t want to stop to have a food even though theoretically he could have taken a fork and eaten something while he was playing cars but but sees apparently he asked someone put some meat between two slices of bread because i don’t want to stop playing and and therefore invented the sandwich now that thing existed way before he ever did that but the association of the term does come from him you know it’s that that he coined the term popularized it or it was coined in memory of him or something like that but we definitely get that term from him um even though there’s things that are sandwiches long before that also apparently he was wildly incompetent and people tended to hate it at least that’s what might be a gambler or just a bad person no he was just like a bad i mean i i imagine there was a lot of fraught relationships with uh you know people of title and girls weren’t always the best subjects back then but i think it’s fascinating that you know we see this in other words too like the tortilla for instance is i mean uh several millennia old and certainly they are roasting meats but we don’t see the term taco show up in spanish until i believe the mid-19th century well the term tortilla is really very interesting because it just means a little pie it comes from spanish and if you ask for a tortilla there you get eggs and potatoes and stuff it’s a totally different thing so so it’s really just the spanish showed up and said what what do we call this thing so you know they just they chose the word tortilla it’s a spanish word not indigenous oh yeah god i kind of didn’t even think about that the term tortillas yes only post colonialization right so what i’m really interested in is a lot of these words are very new right and apparently like sammy’s sandwich for instance could not have existed before the earl of sandwich massive pr campaign and the word hot dog is also you know very very recent 19th century very new but i mean that said sausage making goes back thousands of years so i mean i understand that hot dogs rely on a certain modern process uh to be able to create forced meat right to emulsify at a very high speed but i mean the like the base root concept like if you were to go into the socratic form of what a hot dog is i mean that could have predated that i mean especially a sandwich because it’s so much more rudimentary of just relying on you know some sort of uh leavened bread and filling depending on what you believe a sandwich is so if you look at let’s say ancient rome where sausage sellers were a common thing in the streets and bread sellers bake there’s pictures of people with breads you know in bakeries where they’re selling the stuff that’s common street food it comes so close to being a hot dog sandwich you know it comes that that you know just to claim you know oh here it is in the 19th century we have a hot dog it’s it’s it’s always been there yeah it’s a natural combination that’s very interesting so i mean do you believe that did a hot dog exist before the term hot dog was invented yeah of course i think so i think things exist and then we as humans must name them because we have a strong urge to name things we want a category where the name changes right yeah this is a frankfurter in frankfurt there’s records of people eating those and going back to the 13th century yeah and they’re exactly the same and the us has a lot of german people did you know that well yeah i mean 16 of the united states has like german ancestry i’m very german that’s where my last 49 million americans actually were sheep farmers can you get into like the origin of the term hot dog this is just really fascinating i’ve always been people don’t know yeah i don’t think anyone knows the exact origin of it but it started like that’s a hot dog it’s there’s a there’s a reference i think to a polo grounds game where the word hot dog first appears in print and it refers to the game not the hot dog at all which is sort of weird and there’s it’s a term that you know they used to call it sometimes a dachshund you know or a hot dog just because it looks like that like the hot dog dogs yeah and the hot dog is that that term is there alongside the word frankfurter and alongside the word wiener which just means weiner in english from vienna um and what people often say is that the we stopped using the term frankfurter consciously especially in labeling and marketing during world war one we got into war with germany and the german language newspapers disappear and people tried to pretend we don’t have german heritage we’re not the enemy don’t harass us because we’re americans and and the word frankfurter never really disappeared much but americans more consistently use um the word hot dog now as a result of that that’s really interesting i i mean speaking of origin stories and how unreliable they are i mean i’ve read so many different accounts that one it was like uh there’s the story of a vendor outside of i believe yale and he was a german vendor and there was a stereotype at that point the german immigrants were very poor and wow the college students were like he’s using dog meat and sausages it’s a hot dog but then you have the dachshund thing and the polo story and so like none of these are uh are likely you know i guess correct but i mean is there anything correct here or do we just have to sort of take no modern culture i think people people kind of liked the idea or where they were terrified and thrilled by the idea that there might be dog in it because because this is a general you know conundrum with sausage sausages in general they’re the scraps they’re all the junk that you can’t sell as prime cuts yeah and so people kind of like you know thought wouldn’t this be funny if they’re actually putting dog in there um but that almost certainly never happened you know it’s a stupid joke really there i believe wait hold on i i wrote this down there was a there was an 1843 investigation into a new york meat packing plant that actually found dog and rats had gotten into no the sausage making facility and so that is just a well so that’s disappointing yeah exactly there are no food purity laws until 1906 or something like that so you know the stories of like you know up in sinclair in the jungle yeah someone’s hand goes into the meat into the slurry for the meat of course that happened you know all the time and insects are still allowed in in uh you know food parts per million yeah insects you can have like eight spider legs and peanut butter or something like that right so interesting yeah but i think that you know the association with dogs is just silly it’s just silly [Music] there are few better foods to eat during the summer than a nice juicy grilled piece of chicken or steak or salmon that’s right whether you have a go-to favorite or you like switching up what you’re grilling you can improve your grilling 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butcher box deal for our listeners free bacon for the life of your membership plus ten dollars off holy smokes sign up today at butcherbox.com hotdog and use code hotdog to get one pack of free bacon in every box for the life your membership plus ten dollars off your first order that’s butcherbox.com hot dog and use code hot dog to claim this deal if you were to go to i mean let’s let’s go back to say early 19th century uh germany or god was it austria-hungary back then i mean would they consider sausage being served in a role to be a sandwich or had the term sandwich even like gotten there yeah gotten to germany yeah i mean i’m wondering because i i feel like we almost fit i don’t think so no and it’s and i and they do serve it side by side you know if you go to frankfurt today they will serve you know a hot dog very clearly the same thing with a roll on the side roll on this people pick up the pick up the hot dog with their fingers dip it in the mustard bite it bite a piece of bread and so it’s going down the same you know it ends up the same thing but they just don’t slice it and put it on the side yes so basically we just made it more efficient yeah we made the act of eating a hot dog more efficient and that’s probably why that’s where it comes from that’s why people have the association yeah but you could argue because is a hot dog improved by the combination of all those flavors together or are they actually better on their own because i find with sandwiches in general and this applies to hot dogs also that sometimes the sum of the parts is not greater than they are on their own and i would say sometimes like if you have a really good cold cut and a really good cheese and a really delicious bread keep them apart eat them separately eat them you know like you would in a picnic and sometimes you put them all together and it’s like oh i’ve lost something um it’s so it’s i think it’s hard so for hot dogs i think if you take like a a classic chicago hot dog and you put all this junk on you you lose the foot and a heaven for a fan you put ketchup on it that’s sinful no oh okay you know hot dog really has to have mustard the mustard cuts through the grease and it ketchup spices but but ketchup on a hot uh god no and i think i think in that case and i swear i’ve done this i went to a conference in chicago years ago this is the international association of culinary professionals so they should know what they’re doing can i get an invitation they serve yeah well you’re you can come the next one is going to be um gosh they just happened uh a month ago but anyway yeah there’ll be another one so anyway they were serving hot dogs and it was you know the vienna beef which is a terrible hot dog soft bun and then they put sport peppers and sweet relish and all this junk on and i thought this is the worst hot dog i’ve ever had and you know and i’m a new yorker i will say that you know with with with no apology um it’s got to be dirty water it’s got to be separate you know or or hebrew national is a great hot dog or nathan’s is great too my mother used to buy the really cheap ones called best which were which were really crummy super garlicky um but but hot dogs are great in the water and then they go on a soft bun and you just don’t you know you don’t do much to it do you remember the scene there’s this wonderful do you know the producers oh yeah it’s um it’s zero mustel and gene wilder and he says let’s go out to lunch i’m i’m treating and they end up in central park at a hot dog stand and he says tonight we’re dining al fresco hot dog and it’s hilarious i mean okay one that impassioned plea from ken one i gotta say that uh we cannot afford more one-star ratings on this podcast and ever since we’ve come out against st louis-style pizza because i don’t believe it’s pizza it’s a it’s a matzah it’s what we ate for passover growing up we’d bring it to school and people would laugh at us we don’t need to go back you know never last it’s one week a year and so if chicago for all the chicagoans out there chicago doug is no it’s terrible it’s a salad it’s a it’s a i’ve never had a chicago dog because i’m waiting i’m waiting to go to chicago this is this is like my brain i’d like have to go to chicago the second i land and i have to go eat a show there are four times four times i’m trying it dude i’m gonna try good reason they call it the second city it’s second honestly folks if you have a really good hot dog let it speak for itself don’t mess it up sweet relish should not never go anywhere near a hot dog just just like even it doesn’t even need mustard it’s a great hot dog put it on a bun let it let it be what it is the hot dog water is the condiment because it steams the bun oh gosh no way i will say this this has been really elucidating for me sure and like even can hearing you talk so passionately about hot dogs it makes me understand why they are an entirely separate species and classification of food absolutely and a sandwich and also i mean this is maybe you can speak to this can but like why do i mean you’re not you’re not inside my brain but like why do i hold the idea of sandwich to be something that say has existed throughout history right sandwiches are incredibly popular now and i think i mean economics would show that so let let me answer the question that i posed which i i think i was trying to say that the origin is really not so important but why we love these foods so much is and i think there’s something very quintessentially american about food that you eat with your hands is that we really love pizza we love hamburgers we love sandwiches we love hot pockets whatever it may be is that we don’t like the formality of using a fork and knife and it’s partly because we never really learned to do it properly because we use this fork in one hand and then we change hands and scoop with it and whatever in in europe they hold their fork in one hand with the tines down and the knife in the other they never take them out of their hands um and they never switch and they never do anything and i think it’s made us sort of fearful of messing up of being of being improper or pushing something with our fingers on the plate you’ve seen people do that and so having food that can be held saves us and it keeps us in this state of perpetual infantilization in some respects on the other hand cutlery is kind of sick and think of this you’re putting metal in your mouth and separating yourself from your food think of a culture that uses their hands to eat india or africa where the sensuality of the food you can feel it in your fingers you can put it in your mouth and i think that’s the real appeal of a hot dog is that it’s very sensual i mean not phallic so but you know what i’m saying it could be both it can be both i won’t go there i will go there but but it’s but food with your hands yeah actually tastes better yeah you can get more out of it something that’s separate and put you know knife and fork kind of deal and i think that americans because we are informal we’re egalitarian we like a bargain we like we like to have a whole meal in one pocket in our hands and a hot dog kind of does that you know especially if you throw chili on it or cheese or whatever which is great um that’s that’s very american thing um and people in europe or around the rest of the world look at that and say what a quirky american habit he’s in that strange and you know you know historically the the this is the best story is um mrs nesbit who is the chef for franklin delano roosevelt notoriously terrible terrible cook and i think that that eleanor hired her in revenge to get at franklin because he was always sleeping around and such but she um they invited the the king and queen of england and they deserved them hot dogs and it was like like wait a minute this is a state dinner and you’re giving them you know this junk um and it was it’s always been a joke a food historian’s joke that mrs nesbit you know or however that came to pass um the the the um was it the duke of windsor i don’t know it was british royalty came and they they were served hot dogs and they said this is very good i think i’ll have another i think what a silly american thing you guys do that’s incredible well like what was the response to it i mean was it was it uh kind of patronizing yes of course it was very polite but you could tell like that he thought this was the weirdest thing a president would do with foreign dignitary well i mean do you think that the the hot dog is the best that american culture has to offer or the worst of american culture or it is morally nebulous oh gosh it’s no it’s it’s morally charged it’s very important and i think it speaks of american culture in a very positive way i mean pizza and hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken and things you can pick up with your hands and eat that’s ribs this is the best of american culture think about it that’s that’s the best food and it’s the food that if you go around the world and you say what’s american food that’s what they think of you know for good reason i mean it is crazy seeing the way that we’ve exported that culture there is a professional basketball team in the philippines called the pure foods hot dogs well there you go and something that just shows that the power that this has had and i mean i don’t know i i’m almost halfway to being convinced that a hot dog is not a sandwich but i just it’s it’s tough i mean ken ye god i gotta get back to it you’ll go to a bar in america certainly and you’ll see something on the menu called a sausage sandwich i’ve never seen that you’ve never seen a sausage too go to the lion the espn grill in anaheim downtown disney i mean and clearly he’s right they do call it that that communicates an idea it’s just because we don’t have a better term so wait so what’s your proposal you put sausages on there and i think i think hot dogs deserve because they’re such a dignified food they deserve to have their own category and don’t need to be confused with sandwiches we have a whole slew of sandwiches let’s keep them over there and we have hot dogs which are their own thing and there’s no real benefit from trying to put them together in our minds in our practice in our in our daily conversation we keep those two concepts separate of what value is it to put them together i don’t think we get anything i think we literally i don’t think we get anything out of it no i don’t it’s it’s there’s no real point to doing it to doing that and if you wanted to make a sandwich out of a hot dog i think it can be done but no one would say give me a sandwich and picture in their mind a hot dog ever tank i don’t know how to come i feel like a boxer who’s i feel like yeah i mean come out of the ring muhammad ali at the end of his career he was really just wrong yeah i mean you’re just like literally have sweat dripping off my brow hair i know and this has me thinking about it i mean less from a factual perspective and more from an emotional emotional like like ken said hot dogs deserve to have that you know they’ve earned it foods are emotional they’ve earned that status of being entirely separate and i’m trying to think of any reason people would have myself included for taxonomizing them as a sandwich other than the very stupid and uh short-sighted and like what temp temporocentric view that a sandwich is simply bred with things in it whereas there’s thousands of years of history i mean the term sandwich english invention coming from royalty in a weird pr campaign like ken said i mean you have bread being baked in eastern turkmenistan you know that’s being filled with with meats and they don’t care that it’s called a sandwich to me a 2022 individual yeah you know there’s entire breaks no matter to them we don’t know where they matter to us because we wouldn’t be here without them right and also sandwiches are a wonderful thing they’re dignified they’re delightful they’re among the perfect foods in the world and why would you they don’t need to the the definition of a sandwich doesn’t need to be broadened because we we say two slices of bread put something in the middle sandwich leave it at that hot dog autonomy baby we’re all about hot dog autonomy on this side man i just i am absolutely floored um and did not expect this to go that way and i think that’s fine in life sometimes you can you can kill your idols you can kill the things that you thought were important to you and this is just episode one we got a long way to go josh who knows maybe someone else will come here and swim like sway you the other way maybe i’ll get swayed into thinking a hot dog is a sandwich who knows maybe a sandwich is a hot dog i don’t know anything can happen on this podcast and that’s the beauty of this podcast i i’m very excited going forward uh this is i mean truly mentally taxing i am sweating from all of my pits not just the armpits that’s sweet uh ken i mean thank you so much for for elucidating and all that awesome do you have any closing statements anything else you want people to know about just food and it’s important to history and culture the hot dog anything you want gosh i think when people think of um food history stop asking for origin stories it’s the least yes just wipe this away no one cares when something was invented what we should care about is making it well and then having good hot dogs and good sandwiches as separate things that’s the important thing amen that’s beautiful ken where can the people find you you got anything you want to plug gosh you can find me sure um my book on gelatin is coming out from the university of illinois press soon i’ve already got a book on noodle soup which is um with them and if you want to watch videos that i’ve done i have um my whole food history courses from the great courses and cooking across the ages is in my kitchen with me cooking stuff from ancient times right into the present that was a ball and a whole lot of books incredible thanks ken it was a pleasure to have you on really appreciate it was a pleasure to be here thanks [Music] holy cannoli nicole i am uh i’m exhausted me too but i’m also revived with energy i don’t know i feel the opposite i feel beaten in the ground did you notice how much i was sweating during that i did and i got a little alarmed i kept looking at you to make sure you wouldn’t pass out yeah you thought i was going to go blind like i did when i drank all that cold concentration yeah no but i mean a lot of the things he said really made me rethink my own thoughts sure about why i want to define it as a sample right 100 that was the most fascinating thing to me um that said i mean you are probably deeper entrenched into your position at that hospital 100 i am a hot dog what is a hot dog autonomous hot dog i am a hot dog autonomous and i stand strongly by that and a hot dog is not a sandwich it’s just not i i am still not convinced and i and i know i i may have said that but like now that you know i’m kind of sitting here on my own reflecting on it um i i think ken said a lot of incredibly heat compelling things right it made me rethink a lot of the reasons why i want to actually classify it but what it didn’t make me rethink nicole is the like idea of truth capital t truth and i still believe that a hot dog is a sandwich i believe that we see the world in like you know kingdom phylum genus species and i still believe that a sandwich could be an overarching category at least from the perspective of an american person in the year 2022 i know we got some international listeners out there so i’m not saying that’s the only perspective but again i’m trying to define this for myself let’s see what happens in our next episode and i think next episode we got dr calvin normore a philosopher queued up we have a philosopher coming if anybody and i mean i think he’s really gonna i casually throw out the term socratic forms in the last blow our brains up and i think if there’s anything that philosophers do it’s searching for capital t universal truths that exist and so i’m hoping not just that he’ll come around to my position or offer me evidence for my current position but i’m at least hoping to get more clarity on that and i think we’re going to get it dude i mean we’re going to try we’re going to try i’m going to try our darndest but boy for me listen i don’t know at this point listeners i love you all i don’t even care what you thought about that my mind is absolutely blown and i could not be more excited to keep this gravy train rolling nicole it wouldn’t be an episode of a hot dog as a sandwich without opinions i like casserole [Music] that was sultry you should have more history if you’re going to sing like that man got me all hot and bothered sweating with kennen here uh so we asked you for your hot dog opinions yes and uh boy i’m gonna go first a lot there’s the yeah y’all got a lot of things about hot dogs and we’re gonna start first up with gmm writer megan malone uh nicole this is addressed to you so you take it uh nicole i need your help i asked for a hot dog with both ketchup and mustard on it at a barbecue and everyone looked at me like i was insane for not choosing one or the other is that not a standard order have i been living a lie uh i do this all the time and you’re just around haters baby well no no no okay she’s not around haters she’s around new yorkers i asked megan this took place in new york and ken albala is from new york he was talking about ketchup they’re very anti-catch up there which speaks to the power of the hot dog that’s what that’s what jane campion’s movie should have been called the power of the hot dog don’t you always find a way to bring up that damn nicole hates that movie more than anything um i was actually i almost asked ken about this but i didn’t want to get off on just like a crazy tangent but i want to be like how can you disrespect ketchup as a historian ketchup has thousands of years in history ketchup changed world economies i love ketchup it was a fermented fish sauce from china and i like relish you know what i love on relational hot dog i think yeah hot dog toppings like i i hear ken in being a purist and i think there is something great about a plain delicious well-made hot dog but that said most hot dogs are not that they’re just hot they are not that dress it up however you want it’s a cookout she’s at a barbecue you can you could put chips and freaking soda on your hot dog and i wouldn’t look at you weird mega man you are entitled they can do your happiness do whatever you want all right next up we got okay malindik veggie dogs taste the exact same as real hot dogs they’re all just blended protein and filler slap some mustard and onions on a smart dog give it to a glizzy fangirl she wouldn’t be able to tell it was an imposter this is a good opinion to me i’m a glizzy fan girl and i could tell the difference between a smart dog and a hot dog i don’t know ooh that’s interesting because i’m a i’m an all-be frank kind of girl so i i like that’s just my go-to and i could tell the difference this is a position of privilege nicole if you grew up eating all beef franks then you might be able to tell the difference but if you were like me and you were getting the bar s brand from the 99-cent store that is 60 turkey pork and chicken and then 40 whatever the heck else they throw in there i don’t know that you could tell the difference between that and a smart dog i agree that it like hot dogs i mean even ditto with chicken nuggets are a great veggie substitute sure options yeah it’s cheap one i’ll eat one but i will know the difference yeah and it probably will make me a little bit farty i think i’m going to change my twitter handle to glizzy fan girl i’m into that like a bts stand account but just for glizzies i’m in okay uh we got tents on fire says hot dogs with white rice are objectively superior to hot dogs and buns you can have more toppings mix-ins with or without the risk of said toppings mixing in and being spilled and it branches out to eating hot dogs with liquidy sauces like tapatio or garlic butter this is a good opinion i’ve never cut up hot dogs and put them in rice i’ve never done that bro it’s just not my thing having grown up around a lot of filipino people i’ve eaten a lot of hot dogs with rice oh wow now it all makes sense doesn’t it well that’s an interesting thing that ken brought up right where you know we talked about bread bakers in eastern turkmenistan not caring about the fact that i call something a sandwich out here in california and so i mean this is another cultural lens to look through hot dogs totally hot dogs with rice wow i think i gotta try this and since you’re not eating with your hands they’re right you can put more liquidy sauces on there you know is it like a classic hot dog or like a like or like a longanisa or like no like we’re talking hot dog hot dogs yeah like strawberries wow and so this is really great i’m down for more hot dog rice bowls okay i’m down i’m down i gotta try this but uh can i just have a runny egg on it oh nicole if you’re if you’re hanging with the filipinos shout out to all my penie and pinoy homies out there yeah yeah there’s gonna be some there’s gonna be some runny eggs you know what my favorite uh word is from from uh tagalog which is like cute girl glitzy girl yeah like a bevel actually there’s a song by black eyed peas because uh one of the lead singers of black eyed peas is half black half filipino and uh he had a song sorry we’re tangent you can read the next my favorite is pec peck i know what that means uh sorry to any filipino fans out there for that one all right last one to go live okay that’s one last one uh here we got from at rodrigo saad the brazilian hot dog is the best dog includes toppings such as mashed potato katupiri cheese corn peas lettuce mozzarella mayonnaise ketchup mustard pretty much anything you fancy in there shout out to brazilians you’re the you’re the wild ones well hot dogs hamburgers pizza they’re throwing corn on there and i love me some corn there’s potato sticks on the hot dogs oh my gosh i absolutely love it it’s uh it is like the wild west in terms of toppings and i’m all for it push the boundaries wow this sounds incredible but i think the bun you don’t need it at that point yeah at that point i mean yeah but that said you do magically eat it with your hands somehow it’s a big old fat roll is the is the mashed potato like piped on or smeared on like whatever i think it’s kind of like smeared on but it’s almost like a proto-like potato salad nice nice we are probably familiar with a lot of these toppings from going to brasilia free we both frequent brazilian barbecue if i’ve ever had a last meal be brazilian barbecue 100 you’re right there give me a hot dog on the side and on that note let’s wrap this up nicole i am freaking exhausted but hey before we go let me talk to you a little bit about good mythical evening so last year’s good mythical evening was a truly groundbreaking experience for us and we are excited to tell you that round two is officially happening so this r-rated evening in mythicality is full of twists turns and surprises the show is live so anything can happen last year i got completely covered in olive oil pretty much naked yeah i threw a lot of money at you like from my own wallet i feel like i threw like a hundred dollars at you i kept that can i have my money back you threw it at me it’s mine join us thursday september 1st to kickstart your labor day weekend vibes you can get your tickets as early as this wednesday if you are mythical society’s second and third degree member sign up at mythicalsociety.com and of course thank you all for listening to a hot dog as a sandwich if you want to be featured on opinions or like casseroles you can hit us up on twitter at mythicalchef or in handyzade with the hashtag opinion casserole and for more mythical kitchen check us out on youtube where we launch new videos every week and of course if you want to share pictures of your dishes or your glizzies hit us up on instagram at mythical kitchen to be clear she means glizzy yeah i do please stay tuned next week when we speak to a real life philosopher see if a hot dog is a sandwich see you next time [Music] you