The Mystery:
Why don’t Chicagoans put ketchup on their hot dogs?
Putting ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago is, at best, quietly frowned upon, and at worst, likely to earn you the starring role as the butt of a joke. Geoffrey Baer explores why ketchup is forbidden with the help of Monica Eng.
It is forbidden. It is taboo. You could be publicly shamed. (OK, fine, we’re being dramatic!) Putting ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago is, at best, quietly frowned upon, and at worst, likely to earn you the starring role as the butt of a joke. The reason Chicagoans shun ketchup is because of all the other ingredients on the beloved Chicago-style hot dog. Axios reporter and food expert Monica Eng told Geoffrey Baer that it’s the ingredients of the Chicago hot dog that prohibit the verboten ketchup-ery. “There are seven important ingredients, and they really tell the story of twentieth-century immigration to Chicago,” Eng said. So let’s break those ingredients down. The poppy seed bun reflects Eastern Europe, while the dog itself, often sold by Jewish Americans and sometimes kosher, is Austrian or German. The mustard is also German, while the vibrant sweet piccalilli is a British contribution. Greeks and Italians gave us the elements that “dragged [the hot dog] through the garden” – onions, tomatoes, and a pickle spear. To top it all off, there’s the sport pepper. “There are two schools of thought on these. One [is] that they came with Mexican Americans during the Columbian Exposition. Another theory is that they came during the Great Migration with African Americans who came from Louisiana and Mississippi.” Finally, the celery salt is a Chicago contribution, since the city was key to celery production at the turn of the century. So why no ketchup? Because all those carefully fine-tuned ingredients are like a “beautiful orchestra,” and, said Eng, “The ketchup would smash it, boom, come in with a big bassoon and ruin everything.” But why would ketchup ruin the harmony? It’s loaded with sugar, which is why we liked it so much as kids.
