What Happened to Salisbury Steak?
Once a staple of diners and TV dinners, Salisbury steak has quietly disappeared from American menus in recent decades. What began as a 19th-century “health food” became a frozen dinner icon, only to fall victim to changing tastes. Here’s a look back at the history of this once-proud patty.
The Origins of Salisbury Steak
Salisbury steak — seasoned ground beef patties mixed with breadcrumbs or other ingredients — was invented by James Salisbury, a New York physician who was fascinated by the relationship between diet and health. In the 1850s, he conducted a series of self experiments in which he exclusively ate a single food for a few days or weeks. His first test, a diet of only baked beans, produced disastrous results: “I became very flatulent and constipated, head dizzy, ears ringing, limbs prickly, and was wholly unfitted for mental work,” he wrote in The Relation of Alimentation and Disease (1888). Next came oatmeal and other staples, but it was ground beef, which he called “muscle pulp of beef,” that finally delivered the results he sought.
His prescription was simple: broiled beef patties, served with simple seasonings such as butter, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon. This recipe, he wrote, “affords the maximum of nourishment with the minimum of effort to the digestive organs.” Vegetables, on the other hand, were not only unnecessary but also harmful in his view; Salisbury declared that vegetarians had “less nervous and muscular endurance than meat eaters.”
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Salisbury Steak’s Rise to Stardom
During the Civil War, Salisbury applied his nutrition theories to Union soldiers, who were fed a diet of beef patties instead of the usual hard biscuits, which tended to cause digestive issues. In the decades following the war, Salisbury’s diet evolved from medical prescription to one of America’s first fad diets, spurred on by the rise of wellness culture and increased public interest in healthy food. (Other notable 19th-century foods believed to promote health included graham crackers, which were originally intended to suppress the libido, and Kellogg’s cornflakes, which were served by their inventor John Harvey Kellogg at his world-famous sanitarium.)
World War I was a further boon for the Salisbury steak, as the name became preferred to the German-sounding “hamburger.” By the mid-20th century, the dish had become a blue-collar classic. Hearty, inexpensive, and easy to prepare in large batches, it appeared on diner menus and Navy cookbooks across America.
Then came the postwar boom — and with it, the rise of television. In 1953, the Swanson company introduced the TV dinner, a frozen meal packaged in a compartmentalized aluminum tray. Within its first year of production, more than 10 million trays were sold in the U.S., and the Salisbury steak was one of the TV dinner’s most enduring offerings. For a generation of midcentury families, Salisbury steak was the taste of modern life: a hot meal ready in minutes, eaten in front of the television.
So What Happened to Salisbury Steak?
The same forces that made Salisbury steak famous would later make it unfashionable. In the 2000s, Americans began to fall out of love with processed foods, in part due to growing awareness of their negative health effects. In 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on large sodas in the city, and First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged children to “Move!” The Salisbury steak, which was by then synonymous with microwaved TV dinners, fell victim to its association with cheap, unhealthy meals.
That said, not all processed foods suffered this fate, and another reason for Salisbury steak’s decline may be that it was outcompeted by its more convenient cousin, the burger, which rose to prominence as one of America’s most popular and iconic meals during the latter half of the 20th century. With the spread of fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King, many customers opted for the Salisbury steak’s handheld cousin when in the mood for a beef patty.
Though Salisbury steak has faded from the cultural spotlight in recent years, it is viewed with nostalgia by many who grew up with it and can still be found in home kitchens across America.
