HOT DOG

A hot dog is a cooked sausage, traditionally grilled or steamed and served in a sliced bun as a sandwich. Hot dog variants include the corn dog dipped in corn batter and deep fried, pigs in blankets wrapped in dough, baked, and served ashors d'oeuvres, and Beanie Weenies chopped and mixed with baked beans. Typical hot dog garnishesinclude mustard, ketchup, onions, mayonnaise,relish, cheese, chili, and sauerkraut. The term dog has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat date to at least 1845.In the early 20th century, consumption of dog meat in Germany was common.The suspicion that sausages contained dog meat was "occasionally justified". According to a myth, the use of the complete phrasehot dog in reference to sausage was coined by the newspaper cartoonist Thomas Aloysius "TAD" Dorganaround 1900 in a cartoon recording the sale of hot dogs during a New York Giants baseball game at thePolo Grounds.However, TAD's earliest usage of hot dog was not in reference to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, but to a bicycle race at Madison Square Garden, in The New York Evening Journal December 12, 1906, by which time the term hot dog in reference to sausage was already in use. In addition, no copy of the apocryphal cartoon has ever been found. The earliest known usage of hot dog in clear reference to sausage, found by Fred R. Shapiro, appeared in the December 31, 1892 issue of the Paterson (New Jersey) Daily Press.The story concerned a local traveling vendor, Thomas Francis Xavier Morris, also known as "Hot Dog Morris".