The semiotics of the hot dog

[jsolomon]

Oh! Has anyone brought up the subject of the "foot-long hot dog" yet?

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The foot-long was only meant to exist where tex-mex cooking has its grasp. For, what is a foot-long, but a chili delivery device?

[Carrot Top]

How did this essential part of the American diet disappear completely from everywhere but print advertising for such a long period?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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Absolutely right, Sandy. This is a vital question that we must pursue with vigor.

I do hope that someone can inform us as to not only "how" it disappeared (which is quite mysterious, quite mysterious and enticing to the enquiring mind!) but additionally, for the full story indeed, WHERE it disappeared to.

[jackal10]

Westlers give a different version of history: http://www.westlerfoods.com/funpages/funhistory.html

and they make a Jumbo Dog

[Carrot Top]

No, we've had them for a good long time here as well. But of course for quite a while they've been known as 30-centimetre hot dogs.

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We are unafraid of putting our foots in our mouths here. Better a foot than a metre.

[jamiemaw]

Its a chip butty - from the butter, an essential ingredient

However let me proudly present Westlers, Britain's No 1 Hot Dog.

Pretty well universally if offered a Hot Dog, this is what you will get, from a tin. Note the serving suggestions. As it says

"7 out of 10 hot dogs eaten outside of the home are from the Westlers stable! The biggest range from the biggest brand on the market includes many different sizes, from standard Hot Dogs through to the favourite Jumbo Hot Dogs! These are ideal for Mobile and Static Caterers, Fast Food outlets and Sporting events....Products are ideal for:

Cinemas

Theme Parks

Stadia & Sporting Events

Pubs, Bars & Bistros

Leisure Outlets

For the contract range (with chicken) "Contract Hot Dogs

Currently supplying 75% of UK local authorities, Westler Foods Contracts Range has the widest range on the market,...Westlers Contract range has been developed specifically to cater for the demands faced by those catering for children."

http://www.westlerfoods.com/products/hotdogs.html

Read it and weep...

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I rest my case. Time to call off the dogs.

[Carrot Top]

Westlers give a different version of history: http://www.westlerfoods.com/funpages/funhistory.html

and they make a Jumbo Dog

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Nice site.

Astonishing how everything can be traced back to Babylon.

I hope I don't have a slip of the tongue next time I'm in a diner based on this new knowledge. Why, whatever would they think of me if I asked for a "Babylonian Sausage on a Bun"?

[jamiemaw]

Ah, the chip-butty, another national staple of precombinant carbohydrates and fats.

[Carrot Top]

CANNED HOT DOGS?!?!

(urp)

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We have them here too.

Here, they are tiny little things in tiny little cans.

With a tiny little price tag, and sold in grocery stores that specialize in tiny sorts of foods.

Here, we call them Vienna Sausages.

Some speculate that they are called Vienna Sausages to assure one of the cultural disconnect.

Some people love them.

Excuse me, I think I am hyperventiliating. Must go.

Edited January 25, 2006 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

Wait.  This creates a huge hole in the history of the frankfurter, down which we can pour thousands of historians, a hundred or so English professors (because they have theories of everything these days) and perhaps the semiotics faculty at SUNY Stony Brook--sorry, Stony Brook University.

The hole is this:

We know that the hot dog was really invented at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World's Fair) in 1904, in order to give the R.T. French Co. of Rochester, N.Y., something to go with its new yellow mustard introduced there, unless it was really invented by Abner Doubleday in 1869 because the fans at his new base ball games were complaining about having Tabasco sauce poured over them when they requested "red hots."

In any case, this gives us a span of some 40, or is that 80, years during which apparently no one ate a hot dog until ravenous, class-addled Brits came pouring through Ellis Island or the Washington Avenue immigration station or wherever it was that we processed people whose names ended in consonants rather than vowels.

How did this essential part of the American diet disappear completely from everywhere but print advertising for such a long period?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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Wait. Just. A. Minute.

What were the dates of the Victorian era?

May I propose that my thesis be called "Victoria's Albert Conspiracy as Evidenced in America"?

[MarketStEl]

Westlers give a different version of history: http://www.westlerfoods.com/funpages/funhistory.html

and they make a Jumbo Dog

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Speaking with my tongue fully extracted from my cheek:

This is probably the best short history of the hot dog/frankfurter/wiener/Dachshund sausage (a new term I learned from visting the site) yet posted to this board.

And it explains how the St. Louis World's Fair got into the legend to boot:

Today's hot dog on a bun was probably introduced during the St. Louis "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" in 1904 by a Bavarian concessionaire, Anton Feuchtwanger. He loaned white gloves to his patrons to hold his piping hot sausages.

Most of the gloves were not returned, and the supply began running low. He reportedly asked his brother-in-law, a baker, for help. The baker improvised long soft rolls that fitted the sausage - thus inventing the hot dog bun!

[Carrot Top]

Let me pry my tongue from my cheek momentarily too - to say that I think I've found the popular origin in print media of the word "hot dog". In "American Food" Evan Jones says the "nickname came along when a sports cartoonist created a dachshund with a body that looked like a sausage" and also noted that immigrant German butchers often kept these dogs in their shops.

This is supported by "The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America" which states that "the term 'hot-dog' was certainly popularized by such originators of slang phrases as the sports cartoonist T.A. Dorgan (TAD) early in the twentieth century."

I'd love to see those cartoons.

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Jack, it is no surprise how you feel about the hot-dog. You are surrounded by people to whom, apparently, it does not exist. (Or at the very least, it is something not spoken of in polite conversation! ) Neither "The Oxford Companion to Food" nor the "Cambridge World History of Food" have mention of the dreaded thing.

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Sorry about taking so long to relay this information. . .had to make burgers for dinner.

Now do tell, Jack - if the hot dog is the cultural food symbol of America (though I'm not quite sure it is anymore, really) . .what is the symbol of England?

P.S. I just noticed that somehow we all started talking about the hot-dog and neglected the hamburger. Now if that doesn't demonstrate the true value of semiotics, I don't know what does. . .

Edited January 26, 2006 by Carrot Top (log)

[BarbaraY]

Hmmmm? 1 hot dog chain vs. how many burger places: McD's, Jack in the Box, Carl's Jr, Burger King, White Castle, In-n-Out Burger, and how many more?

Nope, don't think the dog is the symbol of America any more.

[rooftop1000]

Its a chip butty - from the butter, an essential ingredient

However let me proudly present Westlers, Britain's No 1 Hot Dog.

Pretty well universally if offered a Hot Dog, this is what you will get, from a tin. Note the serving suggestions. As it says

http://www.westlerfoods.com/products/hotdogs.html

Read it and weep...

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Can we please not let Eric at Amazing Hot Dog see these pictures???? I know he wouldnt dare, but......

tracey

[Carrot Top]

Hmmmm? 1 hot dog chain vs. how many burger places: McD's, Jack in the Box, Carl's Jr, Burger King, White Castle, In-n-Out Burger, and how many more?

Nope, don't think the dog is the symbol of America any more.

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This is true. And now I am worried.

(I'm assuming you mean A&W when you say "hot dog chain"? Or is there something out there in America I'm missing?)

When I think of "places to get hot dogs" I think of Sabrett carts; Seven-Eleven ; Orange Julius and by not-so-happy extension Dairy Queen; Hardee's; Sonic; and oh! lots of other independent places.

Here nearby in Roanoke there is a true hot dog place, too.

Found a link to it and more at Holly's:

Roanoke Wiener Stand

Hollyeats

Ahhh. Now I'm really getting hungry.

This hot dog thing is not such a bad idea after all.

[petite tête de chou]

There's still a hot-dog restaurant in Portland, too. Roake's It's been many, many years since I've eaten there so I couldn't tell you if it's good or not. Yeah, I'm pretty much useless.

[BarbaraY]

There are very few A & W stand left around here. I was thinking of Weinerschnitzel.

A&W used to, many years ago, have an item called a Whatnik. A hollowed French roll with two dogs, chile and cheese in it. Soooo good!

[Carrot Top]

There's still a hot-dog restaurant in Portland, too. Roake's  It's been many, many years since I've eaten there so I couldn't tell you if it's good or not. Yeah, I'm pretty much useless.

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One of the "user reviews" voted "no" when asked if the place was romantic.

Gosh. Whyever not I wonder?

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In terms of finally determining the semiotics of the hot dog, this morning the thought came to mind to wonder if there is such a thing as a "Semiotic Table". You know, sort of like "The Periodic Table of Elements" but rather used to determine semiotic values of food words (and other cultural elements naturally).

Can any of you academics out there advise on such a thing? It would be very useful for the business world, I imagine. Helpful in deciding what to name your restaurant, you know, based on the score your food words received in whatever categories there were. . .

Really.

Can you imagine if "Five Guys Burgers and Fries" was named instead "Five Guys Hot Dogs and Fries"?

Surely it would be a bust. . .

[Carrot Top]

There are very few A & W stand left around here. I was thinking of Weinerschnitzel.

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No A&W's around here. . .they closed the last one nearby (that was in a mall foodcourt in Roanoke) last year.

I still mourn Zum-Zum's.

[MarketStEl]

Hmmmm? 1 hot dog chain vs. how many burger places: McD's, Jack in the Box, Carl's Jr, Burger King, White Castle, In-n-Out Burger, and how many more?

Nope, don't think the dog is the symbol of America any more.

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This is true. And now I am worried.

(I'm assuming you mean A&W when you say "hot dog chain"? Or is there something out there in America I'm missing?)

I think Barbara was referring to Wienerschnitzel (nee Der Wienerschnitzel), the soi-disant "world's largest hot dog chain."

When I think of "places to get hot dogs" I think of Sabrett carts; Seven-Eleven  ; Orange Julius and by not-so-happy extension Dairy Queen; Hardee's; Sonic; and oh! lots of other independent places.

Here nearby in Roanoke there is a true hot dog place, too.

Found a link to it and more at Holly's:

Roanoke Wiener Stand

Hollyeats

Ahhh. Now I'm really getting hungry.

This hot dog thing is not such a bad idea after all. 

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I beg to differ with both Barbara's assertion that the hot dog is no longer the American food icon and your quick assent to this assertion.

While the hamburger is certainly ubiquitous and dominates the world of chain fast food, I would say that the hot dog is no less ubiquitous now than it was back when baseball, not football, was the national pastime. It's just that--Wienerschnitzel aside--it's not chain fast food. New Yorkers don't grab hamburgers from sidewalk vendor carts; the food vendors that work their way down the stadium aisles during baseball or football games sell hot dogs just about exclusively--for anything else, you have to get up and go to the concession stand; every convenience store worth its salt has a roller grill with hot dogs lazily rotating atop it. And they're certainly as popular with kids now as they were back when an inspired jingle-writer first penned those immortal words, "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener..."

I don't know if there is any place where we can easily find statistics on how many hot dogs vs. hamburgers are sold daily by restaurants and vendors, but I'm not even sure that those figures are necessary. There's still something about the hot dog that makes it an "all-American" food icon, even if we eat more burgers.

[Carrot Top]

I don't know if there is any place where we can easily find statistics on how many hot dogs vs. hamburgers are sold daily by restaurants and vendors, but I'm not even sure that those figures are necessary.  There's still something about the hot dog that makes it an "all-American" food icon, even if we eat more burgers.

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It certainly is true also, that each and every elementary school "social" function (and they seem to be endless) depends on raising funds by selling hot dogs, either dried out cold ones that were heated at home and carried hopefully into the school auditorium and placed on the long tables in battered aluminum tins covered with foil. . .or hot overblown strangely shaped ones that float in water dotted with their own lost grease spots. . .bumping their ends merrily together in the warmed water in the hot pots plugged into the wall with endless lengths of extension cords. . . .either sort then pried up with a fork and stuffed onto cheap buns that have at least one hardened tough spot from sitting out in a half-torn plastic bag for way too long. . .dribbled with cheap mustard or squiggled with tons of ketchup, they raise funds for our childrens education.

Or I think they do anyway. It is entirely possible that the teachers would want to run out into the night towards the nearest bar and drink up the profits after watching the kids and their parents gobble those things down endlessly.

(Please forgive me. Too many years spent in endless PTA meetings offering to do a pigroast for a fundraising function, ANY fundraising function, and always, ALWAYS having the vote go to. . . ta da! The hot-dog! With potato chips and soda, bien sur.)

[srhcb]

I don't know if there is any place where we can easily find statistics on how many hot dogs vs. hamburgers are sold daily by restaurants and vendors, but I'm not even sure that those figures are necessary.  There's still something about the hot dog that makes it an "all-American" food icon, even if we eat more burgers.

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I was loath to participate in this discussion until I was sure what "semiotics" was. After consulting Merriam-Webster Online for a definition, I recalled a pertinent story.

When we were in high school, what was probably my old friend Luke's singular lifetime semiotic musing dealt with hot dogs. He wondered why, "When we eat them boiled at home they're called wieners, at the ball park they're franks, and on a picnic we call them hot dogs?"

I didn't know, and still don't.

I do know that Americans probably eat as much pizza as hamburgers or hot dogs, but that doesn't make it the quintessential "American Food" any more than the fact that we have more pigeons than Bald Eagles makes the former the American Bird.

SB (bemused)

[Carrot Top]

But if we are going to discuss the semiotics of the hot dog, surely we must also discuss the semiotics of all that surrounds it, starting with the bun.

What does it mean that hot-dogs themselves are packaged in sets of eight and hot-dog buns are packaged in sets of six?

Does this say to the world (semiotically) that in our culture there are simply never enough buns to go around for the amount of hot dogs out there?

Does it mean that we always feel ourselves to be two buns short?

Perhaps it is an economic semiotic that reminds us that even if we buy the cheapest processed foods in America, we can expect to get financially screwed or confused somehow?

Really. For what is a hot dog without a bun, I ask you?

Edited January 27, 2006 by Carrot Top (log)

[srhcb]

But is we are going to discuss the semiotics of the hot dog, surely we must also discuss the semiotics of all that surrounds it, starting with the bun.

What does it mean that hot-dogs themselves are packaged in sets of eight and hot-dog buns are packaged in sets of six?

Does this say to the world (semiotically) that in our culture there are simply never enough buns to go around for the amount of hot dogs out there?

Does it mean that we always feel ourselves to be two buns short?

Perhaps it is an economic semiotic that reminds us that even if we buy the cheapest processed foods in America, we can expect to get financially screwed or confused somehow?

Really. For what is a hot dog without a bun, I ask you?

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My favorite bakery sells hot dog buns in eights. I bought a bag this morning, (and some kolaches), and had them earlier tonite with locally made Polish Sausages. (from an eight pack)

As if the poor American consumer had it tough, I understand that in Holland, (and the rest of the EU?), tomatos are sold in fives and eggs in tens. makes menu planning a real mathematical exercise.

SB (throw in a six pack of your favorite beverage ....

[MarketStEl]

But if we are going to discuss the semiotics of the hot dog, surely we must also discuss the semiotics of all that surrounds it, starting with the bun.

What does it mean that hot-dogs themselves are packaged in sets of eight and hot-dog buns are packaged in sets of six?

Does this say to the world (semiotically) that in our culture there are simply never enough buns to go around for the amount of hot dogs out there?

Does it mean that we always feel ourselves to be two buns short?

Perhaps it is an economic semiotic that reminds us that even if we buy the cheapest processed foods in America, we can expect to get financially screwed or confused somehow?

Really. For what is a hot dog without a bun, I ask you?

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A tad bit...yucky. I have this on impeccable authority. Check out the latest posts (as of 1/26/06, 11:12 pm ET) in the "Hot Dogs" thread in this forum.

But as for your larger philosophical and metaphysical musing:

Is it perhaps time for a National Hot Dog Packaging Standardization Committee, along the lines of the World War I-era Screw Thread Standardization Committee that lasted well into the 1970s?

I've seen more variations in hot dog packaging than I have bun packaging.

I've only run across hot dog bun packages in two flavors: packs of eight and packs of 12. ("Why 12?" IMO is an even more interesting question than the original, for it is even more out of sync than the 8s are. Or maybe not. Read on.)

Meanwhile, as for the dogs:

The one constant I've noticed is that the packs weigh one pound, with one notable exception that I'll get to in a minute.

Oscar Mayer manages to get ten of their regular hot dogs out of that pound, the highest number of any brand I'm aware of. (This may be because Oscar Mayer wieners are noticeably thinner than the competition.) I think that several other national brands, including Armour, also come ten to the pound.

Oscar Mayer "bun length" franks (also slender dogs) come eight to the pound, as do a several other brands, including Dietz & Watson, Ball Park, Nathan's Famous and Jamestown Brand Hungry 8s.

Dietz & Watson Eagles Franks, however, come six to the pound.

And then there is the notable exception: Hebrew National, whose dogs come in a 14-ounce package containing seven frankfurters.

Imagine the chaos if all the other major manufacturers adopted the Hebrew National standard. You'd have to load up on eight packages of hot dogs and seven packages of buns before things even out. As Hebrew National franks command a price premium over most other brands due to their reputation for top quality, this could be an expensive proposition indeed.

By contrast, you can achieve balance with a mere three packages of Dietz & Watson regular or Jamestown Brand dogs and two 12-packs of buns. And if you're buying buns by the 8-pack, these brands allow you to achieve the Nirvana of perfect 1:1 symmetry.

(Boy, the stuff I write to keep from working on paring down an overloaded customer's resume.)

[Toliver]

From the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council's web page for Q & A:

How many hot dogs do Americans eat each year and where do they eat them?

  According to recent survey data obtained by the Council, Americans purchase 350 million pounds of hot dogs at retail stores - that's 9 billion hot dogs! But the actual number of hot dogs consumed by Americans is probably much larger. It is difficult to calculate the number of hot dogs Americans may eat at sporting events, local picnics and carnivals. The Council estimates Americans consume 20 billion hot dogs a year - more than twice the retail sales figures. That works out to about 70 hot dogs per person each year. Hot dogs are served in 95 percent of homes in the United States. Fifteen percent of hot dogs are purchased from street vendors and 9 percent are purchased at ballparks, according to statistics from the Heartland Buffalo Company.

It was harder to find pertinent numbers on hamburgers but I found this info:

"The average American consumed nearly 30 pounds of hamburger a year -- three burgers per person per week, totaling 38 billion annually, which, placed end to end, would form a heavenly chain of hamburgers 1.8 million miles long."

which is from this article "Cheap burgers in paradise - History of the hamburger", where this article puts the number a little higher at 40 billion annually.

edited to neaten things up a bit.

Edited January 27, 2006 by Toliver (log)