After the previous post, I felt it important to explain the origin of the humble burger. Yes, it is true that the original form is 'hamburger' even though burgers have never contained ham, or even been remotely related to pork! The reason for the word 'ham' within the original form is that burgers came from Hamburg in Germany. To be precise, when Germans emigrated to America, they took their famous Hamburg steak with them; a mixture of German spices and beef mince. The local Americans were told it was a Hamburger, referring to someone or something from Hamburg. However, because ham was more commonly known, it was widely believed that the two parts of the word were ham and burger, rather than Hamburg and er. This eventually lead to the invention of other burgers, such as the cheeseburger, just by sticking a different word on the front of the already incorrect suffix burger. If this didn't happen, perhaps we would now have the cheesehamburger. Mmm, time for McDonald's!
