This article is about the dish. For the meat served as part of such fish burger dish, see Patty.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards. The specific problem is: article needs a thorough going over for copyedit, citations, extraneous information, unencyclopedic writing, original research. A hamburger, or simply burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The term burger can also be applied to the meat patty on its own, especially in the United Kingdom, where the term patty is rarely used or can even refer to ground beef. Hamburgers are typically sold at fast-food restaurants, diners, and specialty and high-end restaurants. There are many international and regional variations of hamburgers. Hamburg steak has been known as “Frikadelle” in Germany since the 17th century.

The “Hamburger Rundstück” was popular already in 1869 and is believed to be a precursor to the modern Hamburger. As versions of the meal have been served for over a century, its origin remains ambiguous. There is a reference to a “Hamburg steak” as early as 1884 in the Boston Journal. On July 5, 1896, the Chicago Daily Tribune made a highly specific claim regarding a “hamburger sandwich” in an article about a “Sandwich Car”: “A distinguished favorite, only five cents, is Hamburger steak sandwich, the meat for which is kept ready in small patties and ‘cooked while you wait’ on the gasoline range. The origin of the hamburger is unclear, though “hamburger steak sandwiches” have been advertised in U.