Mr. Knight I seriously resent your comment. We take a lot of pride in what we publish on our site. The Mongol story about placing raw meat patties under their saddles is widely accepted by food historians as the possible beginnings of the burger we know today. It's listed in the Oxford Dictionary of Food, the fine publication we mentioned and several other food research books. As Adam K. knows, I spent a good few days researching the origins and concept of the burger for an article that was published in an authoritative food magazine.

What it seems YOU don't understand is that we didn't choose to "conflate" anything. "Steak" or "beef" tartare is directly related to the hamburger. When Khan and his golden army started invading Russia, their tenderized meat patties caught on. This "Tartar" (the Russian name for Mongols) steak was adapted by the Russians and later brought to Hamburg when Russian and German ports started trading. The Germans eventually started offering their Tartar steak raw or cooked and it seems once they immigrated to America and introduced the dish here, Americans favored the latter.

When "Hamburg steak" started becoming mainstream, fine restaurants in the U.S. would include it on their menus and serve it shaped like a true steak. That explains your recipe Dr. Biggles. Later, it was placed between bread to form a sandwich. It is often said the first hamburger sandwich was served at the St. Louis World's Fair but that again is pretty murky.

So I would appreciate you doing some research yourself in the future if you would like to discredit us rather than lobbing off some half-witted insult. As you can see, when it comes to food history there are a lot of gaps which make it easy to get things wrong, but, there are also some well-researched stories out there that those of us who work in this field choose to acknowledge.

Good luck finding a better a site...

Well I can't complain about reviews that are all about me. Although, I do promote privacy and secrecy in most matters related to my personal life which H.H. totally doesn't respect. Will the guy ever learn? More importantly, I'm posting to say that the reason Jennifer Elsie Cox was so exciting to see was b/c she's the totally nuts "Mary" on this season of Six Feet Under. Any SFU fan would have appreciated the sighting.

Thanks Derek. Town Topic is next on our list when we're back in the K.C. this fall.

look at those candy cane swirls of ketchup and mayo! too bad noodlepie says those sauces taste no good. we'll have to try for ourselves fo' shizzle.