ON 18 September, we celebrate cheeseburgers!
The cheeseburger comes in as many forms as the regular burger fast food except that it has a slice of cheese between the patty and top side of the bun. The cheese is added as the burger is finishing being cooked. This allows the cheese to soften and run into the patty but not melt.
Cheese was a rarer food in the United States but the number of cattle farms on the Great Plains grasslands that fill the middle of America, from north to south, made dairy more affordable to consumers and so cheese was put on everything.
Because hamburger was the most affordable form of meat, it’s no wonder cheese was added but it was only by the late 1920s to mid 1930s that cheeseburger became popular enough for people to fight over who created it.
Lionel Sternberger was said to have discovered the cheeseburger in 1926 when he was a 16-year-old fry cook at his father’s California sandwich shop, The Rite Spot. It is said he dropped a slab of cheese on a cooking burger patty.
Kaelin’s Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky claims to have invented the cheeseburger in 1934. But a year later, a trademark for the name “cheeseburger” was awarded to Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, Colorado.
According to archives of the Steak ‘n Shake restaurant, its founder, Gus Belt, also applied for a trademark on the word cheeseburger in the 1930s.
What’s more likely is that the cheeseburger was invented by many people over many years in many different kitchens while they were trying to make the old hamburger a bit more exciting for their customers.
