To begin with, I will tell you that I have nothing against hamburgers, but you do give me a choice, I prefer a good sandwich for many reasons: it is more ours, healthier and more intelligent.
I’ll start at the end. Smartest? Of course, it is obvious, the word was invented by the brilliant Antonio Fraguas, “Forges”. Fruit of the union of shortening “bocadillo” and adding “ata”, creating a slang suffix that we use when we are with our circle of friends, co-workers or family. You know, with the people we usually share something as endearing as lunch.
“Bocata” has been in the RAE dictionary since 1983, where it is stated that it is a colloquial way of calling a sandwich, and that it was adopted en masse by those who took EGB. Its Italian origin is ruled out, and it is not related to the expression “Bocata di Cardinale”, which in Italianini bufo means nothing. Correctly it would be “morso cardinale”, and thus it would have something to do with the “morsum/ad morsum” etymologically related to our “esmorzar”. In any case we are going to allow ourselves all possible licenses, as if we were thousands of Mileis.
The trend of the suffix created by Forges gave another great joy to the hospitality industry. Neither more nor less than with the term “camata”! But also to politics, with “sociata”; or to an incipient Madrid movement and the Valencian bakalao route, with such totemic words as “drogata”, “fumata” and “cubata”. What a great Don Antonio! He is missed, you and your humor. These are such difficult times…
After confirming the high IQ of the word “Bocata” and its connection with our lunch, we are left with the bread. Let no one think of comparing sandwich bread made in an artisanal oven with the industrial pastries that embrace a hamburger. And to make matters worse you have to spread it with margarine or butter and cook it on the grill or it will have no consistency or flavor.
The hamburger is ultimately ground meat with things on a round bun. His story is extremely sad. The first reference to that name is from 1884, and we find the first “Hamburg steak” in New York, in the street stalls where German immigrants who worked in the port ate. Nothing to do with contemporary. The father of the hamburger is a local Hanseatic pork sandwich called “Rundstück warm”, translated from German, it means a “hot round piece”, although it is really leftovers, something you eat on Monday with what was left from the popular roast beef. Sunday pork. Very similar to our paella tupperware.
The success and evolution of the hamburger lies in the fact that it can be made from any animal and anywhere in the world. Its expansion was global thanks to having been born and departed from the best connected port in Europe with America, Hamburg.
How much damage the Germans have done to gastronomy… Neither forget nor forgive for being also the inventors of the Frankfurt frankfurter sausage.
It took the German mind of Oppenheimer and the American arms industry to build the atomic bomb. Well, the same thing happened with this.
Figatell, for example, is something else, also ours, and I do like that.
