A post arguing that this is a Question To Which the Answer is No has been cropping up on my Facebook feed lately and now I see that Andrew Sullivan has linked to it as well. As Waldo Jaquiath puts it, the cheeseburger was until relatively recently an impractical concoction. Not impossible, perhaps, but one requiring many actors and moving parts:
This past summer, revisiting the idea [of making a cheeseburger “from scratch”], I realized yet again that I was insufficiently ambitious. I’d really need to plant and harvest the wheat [for the bun], raise a cow to produce the milk for the butter, raise another cow to slaughter for its rennet to make the cheese, and personally slaughter and process the cow or sheep. At this point I was thinking that this might all add up to an interesting book, and started to consider seriously the undertaking. Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive—requiring a trio of cows—and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not..
This is superfically persuasive but upon a moment’s reflection a nonsense. Sandwiches – which is all a cheeseburger is – have existed for a long time and have been labelled such since the 18th century. and it is certainly not “nearly impossible” to make a cheeseburger from scratch though this, I concede, depends upon your definition of impossible.
But even in Scotland it is possible to have onions, lettuce and tomato ready for picking at much the same time. Nor need you wait for winter to slaughter your cattle (and if you’re making a lamb burger your spring lamb will be ready much earlier than that). Meanwhile, the flour you mill from your winter wheat will keep for months and, last I checked, making cheese and butter are not necessarily seasonal activities.
Of course it is easier and more efficient to take advantage of the miracles of specialisation and allow someone else to produce your cheeseburger for you. That’s a different matter. Before refrigerated transportation the cheeseburger might have been a local or seasonal treat but it could still have existed and, far from being impossible to create oneself, is something that could I be bothered (or, rather, were someone prepared to pay me enough to make it worthwhile) I reckon even I could create/build/farm myself.
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