The Founding ­Father of the real American hamburger was Walter Anderson, who opened a hamburger stand in Wichita, Kansas, in 1916, and who not only developed the bun but also handcrafted a heavy steel spatula to mash down the patty and thereby give the illusion of more-ness (the original spatula is now in a glass case at the Ohio State Historical Society, a must-see for any foreign visitor). Anderson eventually went to work for Edgar Waldo Ingram, and the fusion of the two produced yet another great leap forward in hamburger history.

Ingram was the Babbitt of the burger, an irrepressible booster who in the 1930s recognised the opportunities presented by America’s burgeoning car culture, and through the new medium of mass advertising (“buy ’em by the sack”) convinced drivers and passengers alike that a quick hamburger was just the thing. His White Castle chain grew to 116 identical restaurants, each one sparkling bright and clean, and the hamburger moved from its working-class identification to its status as All-American. And Ingram’s White Castles formed the template for all the fast-food eateries that were to follow.

Ozersky goes on to analyse the many imitators and innovators — Big Boy, with its double-decker hamburger; Wimpy, named after a character in the Popeye cartoon; Burger King and the sensation of the Whopper; and, of course, the more familiar story of the McDonald Brothers and Ray Kroc, who perfected the precision-tool, Model-T manufacture of the hamburger as well as the highly productive system of owner-franchising.

Ozersky’s romping, often tongue-in-cheek book seems to end a chapter short. He gives scant attention to the suburban barbecue where the office-bound American dad becomes the red-meat, atavistic family provider; and he says almost nothing about the backlash against America’s fast-food imp­erialism abroad or against the explosion of fast-food obesity at home. Whether the hamburger is as iconic or culturally expressive as, say, Coca-Cola or baseball, could stimulate further scholarly debate. But Ozersky writes entertainingly, and he succeeds in making the point that the hamburger is... well... as American as apple pie.