60 Fun Facts About Fourth of July Food

The Nathan's Famous hot dog contest is held at the corner of which two Brooklyn avenues?

Nathan's Famous has stood at the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues since Nathan Handwerker opened it in 1916, and the July 4 contest takes place outside that original stand.

The story that Nathan's contest began with four immigrants in 1916 was admitted in 2010 to be what?

Promoter Morty Matz admitted in 2010 that he and Max Rosey had invented the 1916 tale as a publicity stunt in the 1970s; the contest's verifiable history begins in 1972.

Who won the first women-only Nathan's contest in 2011, eating 40 hot dogs?

Sonya Thomas, nicknamed the Black Widow, ate 40 hot dogs to win the inaugural women's contest in 2011, taking the pink belt and $10,000.

Which network began broadcasting the Nathan's contest live in 2004?

ESPN began carrying the contest live in 2004, and the network's coverage turned a Brooklyn boardwalk sideshow into a July 4 television fixture.

Why was reigning champion Joey Chestnut barred from the 2024 Nathan's contest?

Nathan's asked that Impossible Foods' hot dogs be exempted from his contract; Major League Eating said no, and Chestnut ate at Fort Bliss instead.

Takeru Kobayashi's 'Solomon Method' for competitive hot dogs involves what?

He then eats the bun separately; Kobayashi's 50 dogs in 2001 nearly doubled the old record of 25.5.

Roughly how many hot dogs do Americans eat each year?

Americans eat roughly 20 billion hot dogs a year, about 7 billion of them in the peak season between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

In a 2005 National Hot Dog & Sausage Council survey, which condiment was America's favorite on a hot dog?

Mustard won with 32% of respondents in the council's 2005 survey, ahead of ketchup at 23% and chili at 17%.

In 2015 the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council formally declared that a hot dog is not a what?

The council ruled in 2015 that a hot dog is not a sandwich but a category of its own; Merriam-Webster took the opposite view the following year.

Charles Feltman, often credited with first serving sausages in rolls, ran a cart in 1867 where?

His stove-equipped cart sold 'Coney Island Red Hots', and by 1871 he had leased land for a permanent restaurant.

A Chicago-style hot dog is served on what kind of bun?

A Chicago dog sits on a steamed poppy seed bun, 'dragged through the garden' with tomatoes, onions, sport peppers, neon-green relish, a pickle spear and celery salt — never ketchup.

'Texas hot dogs', a spicy variant, are actually a specialty of which region?

Texas hots are a specialty of upstate New York and Pennsylvania — Rochester and Buffalo on one side, Altoona and Scranton on the other — smothered in a spiced meat sauce with no link to Texas.

Hamburgers gained national fame in the US at which 1904 event?

At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair the New York Tribune described the hamburger as 'the innovation of a food vendor on the pike'; Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas, is one of several claimants to that stand.

'Hamburger Charlie' Nagreen claims he invented the burger in 1885 at a fair in which state?

Nagreen was 15 when he sold flattened meatballs between bread at the 1885 Seymour Fair in Wisconsin; the Menches brothers claim the same year at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York.

Which New Haven eatery, founded in 1895, claims to be the birthplace of the hamburger?

Louis' Lunch says founder Louis Lassen grilled ground steak trimmings and served them between two slices of toast for a hurried customer in 1900.

Which 18th-century cookbook contained a recipe for 'Hamburgh sausage' to be served on toasted bread?

Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1758 edition) gave a 'Hamburgh sausage' recipe served on toasted bread, an early ancestor of the burger; Hamburg's 'Rundstück warm' is another.

The word and technique of barbecue come from which indigenous people?

The Taíno of the Caribbean cooked meat over a wooden framework they called barbacoa; Spanish colonists adopted the word and the method, which spread to the American South.

In which decade did cheap backyard grills drive barbecue's mass adoption in America?

The 1950s suburban boom put cheap grills on patios across America; it was the decade the Weber kettle appeared and the backyard cookout became a middle-class ritual.

In the Carolinas, 'barbecue' traditionally means which single meat?

In the Carolinas barbecue means pork — whole hog in the east, pork shoulder in the west — and Carolina pork barbecue is often called the root of the American tradition.

Memphian Henry Perry brought barbecue to which town, now famous for thick, sweet tomato-based sauce?

Henry Perry opened a barbecue stand in Kansas City around 1908; his protégé Charlie Bryant passed the business to brother Arthur, whose Arthur Bryant's became the city's most famous joint.

What are the two classic forms of Memphis-style ribs called?

Wet ribs are brushed with sauce; dry ribs get a rub. Memphians also pile pulled pork onto spaghetti, pizza and nachos.

Central Texas 'meat market' barbecue grew out of butcher shops run by settlers of which origins?

Central Texas barbecue grew out of German and Czech meat markets in towns like Lockhart and Taylor, where butchers smoked unsold cuts and sold them by the pound on butcher paper.

Alabama white sauce, served on smoked chicken, is based on what?

Alabama white sauce is a mayonnaise base thinned with vinegar and sharpened with black pepper and lemon; Big Bob Gibson created it in Decatur, Alabama, in 1925.

Santa Maria-style barbecue from California's Central Coast is built around which cut of beef?

Tri-tip, a triangular cut from the bottom sirloin, is grilled over red oak and seasoned with little more than salt, pepper and garlic in Santa Maria style.

George Stephen built the first Weber kettle grill from parts meant for what?

Stephen worked at Weber Brothers Metal Works in Chicago, which made marine buoys; he cut a buoy in half, added legs and vents, and neighbors nicknamed the dome-shaped grill 'Sputnik'.

Kingsford charcoal briquettes were originally a byproduct of which industrialist's car factories?

Model T production created mountains of wood scraps, and Ford had them turned into charcoal at his Michigan sawmill town, later renamed Kingsford.

In the 2010s, roughly what share of the US charcoal market did Kingsford hold?

Kingsford held roughly 80% of the US charcoal market through the 2010s, converting more than a million tons of wood scraps into briquettes a year.

Botanically, a watermelon is what kind of fruit?

Specifically a pepo, a berry with a hard rind and no internal divisions; the rind is edible once cooked.

Where was the modern watermelon first cultivated?

It reached Egypt by 2000 BC and China by the 10th century; today China grows about 64% of the world's watermelons.

Which US state was the top watermelon producer through the 2010s?

Florida was the leading watermelon state through the 2010s, typically ahead of Georgia, Texas and California; about 44 states grow the crop commercially.

By 2014, seedless varieties made up roughly what share of US watermelon sales?

Seedless triploid hybrids, first bred in Japan in 1939, were slow to catch on because of poor disease resistance, but by 2014 they accounted for about 85% of US watermelon sales.

Apple pie was first recorded in which country, in the 14th century?

American versions are known for being considerably sweeter than European ones.

Ritz promoted a famous 'mock apple pie' recipe from the 1930s that used what instead of apples?

Ritz's mock apple pie used crushed Ritz crackers with sugar, lemon and cinnamon to imitate apple filling; the recipe was printed on the box during the Depression.

In American dairy regions, apple pie is traditionally topped with a slice of what?

A slice of sharp cheddar cheese on apple pie is an English custom dating to the 17th century that survives in the Northeast, Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest.

For whom was the first recorded cherry pie baked?

Queen Elizabeth I is said to have been served the first recorded cherry pie in the 16th century; in America the dessert became linked to Washington's Birthday through the cherry-tree legend.

The oldest known potato salad recipe, from 1621, was written by an Austrian what?

Caspar Plautz, abbot of Seitenstetten Abbey in Lower Austria, printed a potato salad recipe in his 1621 book Nova typis transacta navigatio; American potato salad likely descends from North German versions.

Once picked, sweet corn can lose up to a quarter of its sweetness in how long?

Within a day of picking, sweet corn's sugars start converting to starch — up to a quarter of the sweetness can be gone in 24 hours — so corn on the cob is best cooked the day it is harvested.

Corn on the cob is picked while the kernels are in which phase of development?

Sweet corn is picked at the milk stage, when a pierced kernel releases a milky liquid and the endosperm is still tender; left longer it hardens through the dough and dent stages.

What two-word phrase was contracted to name the graham-cracker-and-marshmallow campfire treat?

Girl Scouts were recorded making 'Some Mores' in the mid-1920s, and the contraction appeared by the 1930s.

The s'more's predecessor, the Marshmallow Marguerite, was a buttered marshmallow on what?

Marguerites stayed popular at women's luncheons into the 1930s while the campfire s'more took over among scouts.

Coleslaw takes its name from a Dutch word meaning what?

Coleslaw comes from the Dutch koolsla, 'cabbage salad' (kool = cabbage, sla = salad), anglicised in the 18th century; 'cole' descends from the Latin caulis.

At some Southern and Midwestern church suppers, a picnic egg dish is renamed 'stuffed eggs' to avoid which word?

They become 'stuffed eggs', 'salad eggs' or 'dressed eggs'; the culinary sense of 'devilled' for spicy food dates to the 1700s.

Frank Epperson said his first accidental Popsicle came from leaving what on his porch overnight?

Epperson, then 11, said he left a glass of powdered lemonade soda and water with a stirring stick outside on a freezing night and found it frozen solid the next morning.

Epperson's original name for his frozen treat, before it became the Popsicle, was what?

He debuted it in seven fruit flavors at Neptune Beach amusement park as a 'frozen lollipop' or 'drink on a stick'.

The red, white and blue Bomb Pop's classic flavors are cherry, blue raspberry and what?

The Bomb Pop's original trio is cherry, lime and blue raspberry; James Merritt and D.S. Abernethy introduced it in Missouri on July 30, 1955.

Boston-style baked beans are sweetened with what?

Boston baked beans get their dark sweetness from molasses, a legacy of the city's colonial rum-and-molasses trade; they bake slowly for hours in a covered beanpot.

Which company led US canned baked bean sales through the 2010s?

Bush Brothers, the Tennessee family company behind Bush's Best, sold the bulk of America's canned baked beans through the 2010s, while Heinz was the British favorite.

Who published the first known recipe for tomato ketchup, in 1812?

James Mease, a Philadelphia scientist and horticulturist, published the first known tomato ketchup recipe in 1812; earlier ketchups were made from mushrooms, walnuts, oysters or fish.

Modern thick ketchup emerged in the early 1900s from a fight over which preservative?

Heinz sidestepped the sodium benzoate controversy by using ripe tomatoes and more vinegar, producing a thick, preservative-free ketchup that set the modern standard.

Which 1817 English cookbook gave a recipe for potatoes 'fried in slices or shavings'?

William Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle (1817) gave a recipe for potatoes 'fried in slices or shavings', decades before the Saratoga Springs chip legend set in 1853.

In the 1920s Laura Scudder kept potato chips fresh by pioneering bags made from what?

Scudder's workers ironed sheets of wax paper into bags at home and filled them the next day at her Monterey Park, California factory, keeping the chips fresh and crisp.

Charles Hires first marketed his root beer to the public at which event?

Hires introduced his root beer at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, selling it first as a powdered extract; Prohibition later boosted the non-alcoholic drink.

Most commercial root beer stopped using real sassafras after the FDA banned which compound in 1960?

Safrole, the main component of sassafras oil, was banned as a food additive by the FDA in 1960 after it caused liver cancer in rats; root beer makers switched to safrole-free extracts or artificial flavoring.

The oldest known sweet tea recipe, in an 1870s Virginia cookbook, used which tea?

Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) called for green tea, iced and sweetened; black tea took over during World War II, when the war with Japan cut off green tea imports.

Edwin Perkins invented Kool-Aid in 1927 in which state?

Edwin Perkins created Kool-Aid in Hastings, Nebraska, by drying his liquid concentrate Fruit Smack into a powder; Nebraska named it the official state soft drink in 1998.

Jell-O was born in 1897 when Pearle Bixby Wait trademarked the name in which New York town?

Pearle Bixby Wait, a carpenter and cough-syrup maker in Le Roy, New York, trademarked Jell-O in 1897; his wife May coined the name, and the original flavors were strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon.

One origin story for the sloppy joe credits a bar owner in which city in 1917?

José 'Sloppy Joe' Abeal y Otero opened his Havana bar in 1917, and his ground-beef-and-tomato dish may have been a take on ropa vieja; Hemingway later had a Key West bar renamed Sloppy Joe's.

How did George Washington mark July 4, 1778 for his troops at Ross Hall, New Jersey?

Washington ordered a double ration of rum for his soldiers and an artillery salute; across the Atlantic, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin hosted a dinner for fellow Americans in Paris.

A company of lemonade sellers, the Compagnie de Limonadiers, was doing business in Paris by which year?

The Compagnie de Limonadiers was granted a monopoly on lemonade sales in Paris in 1676; its vendors carried tanks on their backs and sold cups to passers-by.

What colour is the 'bejeweled' championship belt awarded to the winner of the Nathan's men's contest?

The men's prize is the Mustard Belt, a bejeweled mustard-yellow belt that organizer George Shea describes as being of 'unknown age and value', and it travels home with the winner.