A hamburger (or burger for short) is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat (usually beef, but occasionally pork, turkey, or a combination of meats) usually placed inside a sliced bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, pickles, cheese and condiments such as mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup and relish. The hamburger has attained widespread popularity and has proliferated worldwide.
The term hamburger or burger can also be applied to the meat patty on its own, especially in the UK where the term "patty" is never used, although the term "hamburger" is rarely used in the Commonwealth countries unless referring to a menu item of an American restaurant.
The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, from where many emigrated to America. In high German, "Burg" means fortified settlement or fortified refuge; and is a widespread component of place names. Hamburger can be a descriptive noun in German, referring to someone from Hamburg (compare London -> Londoner) or an adjective describing something from Hamburg. Similarly, frankfurter and wiener, names for other meat-based foods, are also used in German as descriptive nouns for people and as adjectives for things from the cities of Frankfurt and Wien (Vienna), respectively. The term "burger" is associated with many different types of sandwiches similar to a hamburger.
