Your favorite Fourth of July foods were invented by immigrants

On a typical red-and-white checkered Fourth of July picnic table, you’ll find everything from a juicy burger and a charred hot dog to piles of potato salad and seemingly endless cans of beer—it really doesn’t get more all-American.

Unsurprisingly, the foods we eat to celebrate our country’s independence came to us from all over the world. In fact, none of America’s traditional cookout foods have much to do with the country’s very first birthday in 1777, a year after the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

“If you celebrate with barbecue, you are closer to the way people would have celebrated in the early republic, with pig roasts and cider for the whole community,” says Megan Elias, director of food studies programs at Boston University and author of Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture. Most of today’s popular Independence Day foods “are instead mid-twentieth century suburban cookout foods from the Midwest, which was much more German in its demographics than other parts of the U.S.,” she notes.

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We spoke to Elias and other food historians about how our Fourth of July favorites got here in the first place.

The hamburger’s ties to ancient Rome

It’s hard to imagine an American menu without a classic burger—smashed, stuffed with cheese, or made with wagyu. But the hamburger actually hails from a beloved ancient Roman dish called isicia omentata, which was made with minced meat—the world’s oldest known cookbook, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, suggests peacock, pheasant, rabbit, chicken, or pork—mixed with wine, pine nuts, and fish sauce. 

By the 18th century, Germans were mincing cow meat into steak in Hamburg, grilling them, and topping it all off with gravy. Hamburg steaks quickly became popular all over Europe.

In 1900, Danish food peddler Louis Lassen sold the country’s first burger in New Haven, Connecticut off the back of his wooden wagon. Four years later, burgers were being sold for five cents a pop at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

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“Hamburgers and hotdogs became street food in the early 20^th century as an increasingly mobile population looked for food they could eat on the go,” says Elias. Today, they’re one of the most eaten foods on July 4.

The hot dog’s German roots

The introduction of the hot dog to America is tied to Germany and its bratwurst-centric cuisine.

“German immigrants, particularly in the mid-19th century after the failed revolutions of 1848, opened restaurants, taverns, and beer gardens, popularizing lager beer, sausages like Frankfurters, ground meat Hamburgers, potato salad, and coleslaw,” says Paul Freedman, professor of history at Yale and author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America. “They have become patriotic foods because they lend themselves to the July 4 summer climate—outdoor cookery, cold dishes, beer—and because their foreign origin has been forgotten.”

In 1876, German immigrant Charles Feltman invented the concept of a hot dog on a bun in Coney Island, New York as a way to avoid providing plates and silverware to customers. Later in 1916, Nathan Handwerker, one of Feltman’s employees, opened Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs a few blocks away. Today, Nathan’s on Coney Island holds its popular hot dog eating contest every Fourth of July.

“July 4 remains the biggest hot dog day of the year, when Americans eat an estimated 150 million hot dogs,” says Eric Mittenthal, president of the Meat Institute’s National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. 

Potato salad’s journey from Peru to present-day America

While potatoes were first grown by the Incas in Peru more than 7,000 years ago, European immigrants are credited with bringing them to the table in the 16^th century after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Later that same century, Germans whipped up one of the first potato salads, called kartoffelsalat. 

By the mid-19th century, a mayo and relish-dressed variety arrived in the South while northerners took on a version with dill and sour cream. The production of Hellman’s in the early 1900s further popularized the iconic may-based potato salad, but today, variations include everything from a vinegar base to the inclusion of ingredients like hard-boiled eggs and paprika.

“Potatoes and cabbage are still very common staples in central and eastern Europe, lasting through cold winters, and then getting dressed up as salads for the summer,” says Elias.