Dachshund sausages first became popular in New York, especially at baseball games. At games they were sold by men who kept them warm in hot-water tanks. As the men walked up and down the rows of people, they yelled, "Get your dachshund sausages! Get your hot dachshund sausages!" People got the sausages on buns, a special bread.

One day in 1906 a newspaper cartoonist named Tad Dorgan went to a baseball game. When he saw the men with the dachshund sausages, he got an idea for a cartoon. The next day at the newspaper office he drew a bun with a dachshund inside—not a dachshund sausage, but a dachshund. Dorgan didn't know how to spell dachshund. Under the cartoon, he wrote "Get your hot dogs!"

The cartoon was a sensation, and so was the new name. If you go to a baseball game today, you can still see sellers walking around with hot-water tanks. As they walk up and down the rows they yell, "Get your hot dogs here! Get your hot dogs!"

Coca-Cola

In 1886 John Pemberton, a druggist in Atlanta, Georgia, made a brown syrup by mixing coca leaves and cola beans. Pemberton sold the syrup in his drugstore as a medicine to cure all kinds of problems. Pemberton called his all-purpose medicine "Coca-Cola".

When few people bought Coca-Cola, Pemberton sold it to another druggist, Asa Candler. Candler decided to sell Coca-Cola as a soda-fountain drink instead of as a medicine. Candler advertised a lot and sold his syrup to many drugstores. Soon everyone was going to soda fountains and asking for Coca-Cola.

Candler saw no reason for putting Coca-Cola into bottles. But two businessmen thought this would be a good idea. They got permission from Candler, and before long they became millionaires.

As of 1903, coca leaves were no longer used in Coca-Cola, the exact ingredients used and their quantities are not known — the Coca-Cola Comраnу keeps its recipe a secret.

World War I helped make Coca-Cola popular outside the United Slates. The Coca-Cola Company sent free bottles of the drink to U.S. soldiers fighting in Europe. Coca-Cola became very popular with the soldiers — so popular that the U.S. Army asked the company to supply it. After the WWI factories continued to make Coca-Cola in Europe.

Canned Food

Food which is kept too long decays. The canning process, however, seals the product in a container so that no infection can reach it, and then it is sterilized by heat. No chemical preservatives are necessary, and properly canned food does not deteriorate during the storage.

The principle was discovered in 1809 by a Frenchman called Nicolas Appert. He corked food lightly in wide-neck glass bottles and immersed them in a bath of hot water to drive out the air, and then he hammered the corks down to seal the jars hermetically. Appert’s discovery was rewarded by the French government because better preserved food supplies were needed for Napoleon’s troops on distant campaigns.

By 1814 an English manufacturer had replaced Appert’s glass jars with metal containers and was supplying tinned vegetable soup and meat to the British navy. The next scientific improvement, in 1860, was the result of Louis Pasteur’s work on sterilization through the application of scientifically controlled heat.

Today vegetables, fish, fruit, meet and beer are canned in enormous quantities. Within three generations the eating habits of millions have been revolutionized. Foods that were previously seasonal may now be eaten at any time, and strange food is available far from the countries where it is grown.

English Cuisine

I am always both amused and annoyed when I hear foreign people criticize English food. "It's unimaginative", they say. "It's boring, it's tasteless, and it’s chips with everything and totally overcooked vegetables". "It's unambitious", say the French. When I ask these visitors where they have experienced English cooking, I am astonished by their reply. "In Wimpy Bars and McDonald's Hamburger restaurants", they often say. I have won my case. Their conclusions are inexcusable.

I have a theory about English cooking, and I was interested to read that several famous cookery writers agree with me. My theory is this. Our basic ingredients, when fresh, are so full of flavor that we haven't had to invent sauces and complex recipes to disguise their natural taste. What can compare with fresh peas or new potatoes just boiled (not overboiled) and served with butter? Why drown spring lamb in wine or cream or yoghurt and spices, when with just one or two herbs it is absolutely delicious? We have to go back to before World War II.

The British have in fact always imported food from abroad. From the time of the Roman invasion foreign trade was a major influence on British cooking. English kitchens, like the English language, absorbed ingredients from all over the world - chickens, rabbits, apples, and tea. All of these and more were successfully incorporated into British dishes. Another important influence on British cooking was of course the weather and climate. We complain about our wet and changeable weather but the good old British rain gives us rich soil and grass, and means that we are able to produce some of the finest varieties of meat, fruit and vegetables, which don't need fancy sauces or complicated recipes to disguise their taste. "Abroad poor soils meant more searching for food, more discovery, more invention, whereas our ancestors sat down to plenty without having to take trouble", says Jane Grigson.

However, World War II changed everything. Wartime women had to forget 600 years of British cooking, learn to do without foreign imports. The Ministry of Food published cheap, boring recipes. The joke of the war was a dish called Woolton Pie (named after the Minister for Food!). This consisted of a mixture of boiled vegetables covered in white sauce with mashed potato on the top. Britain never managed to recover from the wartime attitude to food. We were left with a loss of confidence in our cooking skills and after years of Ministry recipes we began to believe that British food was boring, and we searched the world for sophisticated, new dishes which gave hope of a better future. Surely food is as much a part of our culture as our landscape, our language, and our literature. Nowadays, cooking British food is like speaking a dead language. It is almost as bizarre as having a conversation in Anglo-Saxon English!

If you ask foreigners to name some typically English dishes, they will probably say "Fish and chips" and then stop. It is disappointing, but true, that there is no tradition in England of eating in restaurants. English cooking is found in the home, where it is possible to time the dishes to perfection. So it is difficult to find a good English restaurant with reasonable prices.

It is for these reasons that we haven't exported our dishes, but we have imported a surprising number from all over the world. In most cities in Britain you'll find Indian, Chinese, French and Italian restaurants. In London you'll also find Indonesian, Lebanese, Iranian, German, Spanish, Mexican, Greek...Cynics will say that this is because we have no "cuisine" ourselves. However, there is still one small ray of hope. British pubs are often the best places to eat well and cheaply in Britain, and they also increasingly try to serve tasty British food.

Nations & Food: Past & Present

(1) Human history has been shaped by a preoccupation with food. Ever since prehistoric times, the search for food has determined where people have lived, what they have invented, who they have befriended, and how they have lived. Throughout history, conditions related to the food supply have determined where ports and cities were built, where expeditions of exploration were sent, which wars were fought, and who would rule nations. Nothing has occupied more human time and energy than the tasks related to finding, collecting, transporting, and preparing food. Food both reflects the societies in which it is found and shapes the character of the people in them.