Hamburger
A hamburger, or better known as a burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or chilis; condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, or a "special sauce", often a variation of Thousand Island dressing; and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger.[1]
This article is about the dish. For the meat served as part of such a dish, see Patty. For other uses, see Hamburger (disambiguation).Course
Hamburgers are often sold at fast-food restaurants and diners, but are also sold at various other restaurants. There are many international and regional variations of hamburger. Some of the largest multinational fast-food chains have a burger as one of their core products: McDonald's Big Mac and Burger King's Whopper have become global icons of American culture.[2][3]
Etymology and terminology
The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany; however, there is no certain connection between the food and the city.[4]
By rebracketing, the term "burger" eventually became a self-standing word that is associated with many different types of sandwiches that are similar to a hamburger but contain different meats such as buffalo in the buffalo burger, venison, kangaroo, chicken, turkey, elk, lamb or fish such as salmon in the salmon burger, and even with meatless sandwiches as is the case of the veggie burger.[5]
The term burger can also be applied to a meat patty on its own. Since the term hamburger usually implies beef, for clarity burger may be prefixed with the type of meat or meat substitute used, as in beef burger, turkey burger, bison burger, portobello burger, or veggie burger. In many English-speaking countries outside the United States, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a piece of chicken breast on a bun is known as a chicken burger, which would generally not be considered a burger in the United States because the meat is whole, not ground; Americans would generally call it a chicken sandwich, but in Commonwealth English a sandwich typically requires sliced bread, and anything with a bun is usually considered a burger.[6][7][8]
