59 Fun Facts About Fourth of July Food

Which president wrote out the first known ice cream recipe recorded by an American?

Thomas Jefferson's handwritten recipe survives in the Library of Congress; he did not bring ice cream to America, as legend has it, but he helped make it fashionable by serving it at the President's House.

The tale that Nathan's contest began in 1916 was admitted in 2010 to be what?

A publicity stunt invented in the 1970s: press agent Morty Matz admitted he and Max Rosey made the 1916 tale up to get the contest into New York's newspapers, which went on repeating it for decades.

Which nickname did Sonya Thomas, Nathan's 2011 women's champion, earn for out-eating bigger men?

The Black Widow weighed only about 100 pounds, and her size may even have helped: one theory holds that a thin eater's stomach can stretch further with no belt of fat around it.

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

ESPN's first telecast in 2004 was a live one-hour special; the network later put Paul Page, a motorsports broadcaster best known as the voice of the Indianapolis 500, on the call.

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

He signed a deal with a plant-based hot dog brand, Impossible Foods, a Nathan's rival; shut out of the contest, he ate 57 hot dogs in five minutes against four soldiers at Fort Bliss instead.

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

Snapping each hot dog in half lets him feed both pieces in together before the water-dunked bun; the name is said to nod to King Solomon's offer to cut a baby in two. In 2001 it took him to 50 hot dogs, almost twice the old record.

About how many hot dogs do Americans eat on July 4?

150 million hot dogs on Independence Day is the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council's estimate: enough, it says, to stretch from Washington to Los Angeles more than five times.

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

Mustard topped the council's 2005 survey, ahead of ketchup, and the council's own etiquette guide goes further: don't use ketchup on your hot dog after the age of 18.

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?

Coney Island is where Feltman began with a pie wagon in 1867 and built a restaurant empire; in 1916 a Feltman's employee, Nathan Handwerker, quit to open Nathan's Famous nearby, selling hot dogs for a nickel, half Feltman's price.

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

A Chicago dog's poppy seed bun carries so many toppings it is said to be 'dragged through the garden'; the style took shape in the Depression, when a Maxwell Street vegetable cart sold a loaded dog for a nickel.

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

Upstate New York and Pennsylvania diners, many run by families with Greek roots, made the Texas hot their own: a hot dog under spiced chili sauce and onions, with 'Texas' nodding only to the chili.

Hamburgers are said to have won national fame in the US at which 1904 event?

The St. Louis World's Fair is where Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas, is said to have sold burgers from a stand in 1904; a century later a Texas lawmaker drafted a bill naming him the hamburger's creator.

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

Wisconsin's Seymour Fair is where Nagreen, then 15, flattened his meatballs between slices of bread so fairgoers could eat as they walked; he came back to sell them every year until his death in 1951.

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 chain, founded in Wichita, is often called America's first fast-food hamburger chain?

White Castle opened in Wichita in 1921 with five-cent burgers; co-founder Walt Anderson had sped things up by flattening the usual meatball-like patty on a hot griddle with onions.

The word barbecue comes from 'barbacoa', a wooden cooking frame used by which indigenous people?

The Taíno of the Caribbean roasted meat on a raised frame of sticks that the Spanish recorded as barbacoa; the same kind of platform also served as a bed, lifted clear of the ground.

Barbecue went mainstream in 1950s America once which item became cheap and common?

Backyard grills became inexpensive and commonplace in the 1950s; the open braziers of the day let the wind blow ash onto the food, the problem George Stephen set out to fix with his lidded kettle.

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

Pork, whether whole hog or shoulder, is the only meat Carolinians call barbecue; early Southern farmers favored pigs because they were cheap to keep and could be turned loose in the woods to feed themselves.

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

Kansas City's barbecue began with Memphis-born Henry Perry, who sold smoked meats from an alley stand from 1908; Charlie Bryant, who worked for him, took over, and his brother Arthur put the family name on it.

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

Wet and dry: wet ribs are brushed with sauce, dry ribs get only a spice rub; Charlie Vergos developed his dry ribs in a basement restaurant off a downtown Memphis alley, basing the rub on a Greek seasoning.

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

German and Czech butchers in Central Texas towns like Lockhart smoked the cuts they couldn't sell fresh, then sold the smoked meat to field workers, who were the ones who called it barbecue.

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

Mayonnaise, thinned with vinegar and spiked with pepper, is the base; Big Bob Gibson of Decatur, Alabama, is said to have coated his smoked chickens in it so they wouldn't dry out while waiting to be served.

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

Tri-tip grilled over native red oak is the centerpiece of Santa Maria barbecue, a tradition that grew out of the spring feasts local ranchers held for their vaqueros.

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

Buoys were built at Weber Brothers Metal Works in Chicago, so Stephen joined two of their half-spheres into a lidded grill; nicknamed Sputnik for its shape, the kettle became his business, and in the late 1950s he took over the company.

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

Henry Ford had the wood scraps from his car plants turned into charcoal briquettes; the brand took the name of E.G. Kingsford, his cousin's husband, who had helped him find the Michigan timberland.

Which beer swapped its name for 'America' on cans and bottles in the summer of 2016?

Budweiser replaced its own name with 'America' from late May until the November election, and swapped the rest of the label for patriotic lines such as 'E pluribus unum' and 'Liberty & Justice For All'.

Botanically, a watermelon is what kind of fruit?

A berry: botanists class the watermelon as a pepo, a berry with a hard rind. By the same definition bananas and grapes are berries too, while strawberries and raspberries are not.

A 2021 study found the watermelon's closest relative in which country?

Sudan's Kordofan melon, with non-bitter whitish flesh, appears to be the closest relative and a possible ancestor of today's watermelon; Egyptian tomb paintings suggest the fruit was served in the Nile Valley over 4,000 years ago.

As of 2024, which state leads US watermelon production?

Florida grew almost a quarter of the US crop in 2024 and has long been the top watermelon state; it is the only big producer that ships melons from December to April, when prices run higher.

The first seedless watermelons were bred in 1939 by scientists in which country?

Japan's scientists bred the first seedless triploid hybrids in 1939, but weak disease resistance held them back for decades; by 2014 they made up nearly 85% of US watermelon shipments.

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

England's oldest known apple pie recipe, from the reign of Richard II, baked the apples with figs, raisins, pears and saffron in a pastry 'coffin' and called for no sugar at all.

Which cracker brand printed a 'mock apple pie' recipe, made with no apples, on its boxes from 1935?

Ritz put the recipe on its box a year after the cracker's launch: crackers baked in a spiced sugar syrup pass for apples, a trick thrifty cooks had been using long before Nabisco.

In parts of the Northeast and Midwest, apple pie is traditionally topped with a slice of what?

Sharp cheddar cheese on apple pie has devoted fans; Vermont's 1999 state-pie law even asks sellers to make a 'good faith effort' to serve it with cheddar, cold milk or ice cream.

Tradition holds that the first cherry pie was baked for whom?

Elizabeth I is said to have been served the first cherry pie, though the story is only tradition; in America the dessert became tied to Washington's Birthday through the cherry-tree legend.

American potato salad is thought to have arrived with 19th-century immigrants from which country?

Germany's immigrants are the likeliest carriers: early American recipes dressed the potatoes with oil, vinegar and herbs, not today's creamy dressing. The oldest known recipe is an Austrian abbot's, from 1621.

Once sweet corn is picked, its sugars steadily convert into what?

Starch builds up as the sugar in a picked ear breaks down, so the kernels turn tough and bland; that is why sweet corn is best cooked the day it is harvested.

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

The milk stage is when a squeezed kernel oozes a milky juice and is still tender; field corn, by contrast, is left on the stalk until its kernels are dry and dented.

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

Some more: Girl Scouts were making 'Some Mores' by the mid-1920s. The graham cracker beneath began as a health food inspired by Sylvester Graham, a reformer who preached against rich and spicy fare.

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

A saltine cracker carried the buttered marshmallow; Marguerites stayed popular at women's luncheons into the 1930s while scouts took up the s'more.

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?

Devil is the word being dodged, though the name is innocent: it points to the peppery seasoning in the filling, since cooks have long called hot, heavily seasoned food 'deviled'.

Frank Epperson said he invented the Popsicle by leaving which drink on a cold porch overnight?

Homemade soda, powder stirred into water with a wooden stick, is what the 11-year-old said he left out in 1905; he found it frozen solid around the stick and, nearly two decades later, patented the idea.

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

Epsicle joined Epperson's surname to 'icicle'; the story goes that his own children, who called the treat Pop's 'sicle, talked him into the name that stuck.

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

Lime joins cherry and blue raspberry in the original Bomb Pop, created in Missouri in 1955 by James S. Merritt and D.S. Abernethy; when Merritt Foods collapsed in 1991, Wells' Dairy bought the brand.

Boston-style baked beans are sweetened with what?

Molasses gives Boston baked beans their dark sweetness: the colonial port imported it in bulk for its distilleries, so cooks had plenty to hand. The dish gave the city its nickname, Beantown.

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

Bush Brothers, a family firm from Tennessee, makes roughly 80 percent of the canned baked beans Americans eat; it began as a tomato cannery in 1908 and turned to baked beans only in 1969.

Before tomatoes took over, British ketchup from the 1600s was most often made from what?

Mushrooms, along with walnuts and oysters, flavored early British ketchups, which began as attempts to copy a fermented fish sauce that British traders had met in Asia; the first known tomato recipe came only in 1812.

Which company made ketchup thick in the early 1900s by using ripe tomatoes and extra vinegar instead of preservatives?

Heinz bet that shoppers wanted no chemicals: amid the fight over the preservative sodium benzoate, it switched to ripe, pectin-rich tomatoes and far more vinegar, which kept ketchup from spoiling and made it thick.

Legend says the potato chip was born in 1853 when a cook lost his temper at a resort in which town?

Saratoga Springs cook George Crum is said to have sliced potatoes wafer-thin to spite a fussy diner, but he was not first: the 1817 cookbook The Cook's Oracle had already printed a recipe for potatoes 'fried in slices or shavings'.

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 gave the public a taste of his root beer in 1876 at which event?

The Philadelphia Centennial Exposition is where Hires handed out free glasses of his brew; a temperance man, he first sold it as 'root tea' and is said to have switched to 'beer' to win over hard-drinking miners.

Root beer got its flavor from the root bark of which tree until an FDA ban in 1960?

Sassafras oil is mostly safrole, a compound the FDA barred from food in 1960 after it caused liver cancer in lab animals; root beer makers switched to safrole-free extract or artificial flavoring.

Which state made Kool-Aid, invented there in 1927, its official soft drink?

Nebraska's Edwin Perkins sold a bottled drink concentrate called Fruit Smack from Hastings; the bottles were costly to ship, so in 1927 he dried it to a powder and renamed it Kool-Aid.

Which state's Senate declared Jell-O a favorite state snack in 2001, after years of leading the nation in eating it?

Utah acted after Des Moines, Iowa, briefly outdid Salt Lake City in Jell-O eating in 1999 and Utahns rallied to 'Take Back the Title'; the dessert itself was trademarked in 1897 in the town of Le Roy.

One origin story for the sloppy joe credits a bar owner in which Caribbean capital?

Havana bar owner José Abeal Otero was nicknamed Sloppy Joe, and his ground-beef dish may have been a take on Cuban picadillo; Ernest Hemingway later talked a Key West friend into borrowing the bar's name.

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.

From 1676, street vendors in Paris carried tanks on their backs to sell cups of which drink?

Lemonade, then a mix of water and lemon juice sweetened with honey, was the trade of the Compagnie de Limonadiers, which was formed in Paris in 1676 and granted a monopoly on selling it.

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

Mustard yellow gives the prize its nickname, the Mustard Belt, which Takeru Kobayashi held for six straight years until Joey Chestnut took it from him in 2007.