Who Really Pioneered The Cheeseburger? Meet The 2 Men Who Battle For The Crown

It is quite arguably the most iconic fast food of all time, and yet the history of the cheeseburger isn't straightforward. Whoever first came up with the idea to perfectly melt cheese onto a hamburger was a bit of a genius, but who that person was is still up for debate, muddied by local legends and competing claims and without any clear history to set the record straight. If you were to look it up, you'd quite quickly see the name Lionel Sternberger, who has been credited with creating the first ever cheeseburger in the 1920's in his dad's sandwich shop in Pasadena, California. The shop would later call this piece of cheese on a burger the "Aristocratic Burger," and Pasadena has embraced the tale so enthusiastically that the city even installed a plaque which celebrates it as the birthplace of the cheeseburger.

But Sternberger isn't the only man with a credible claim to the cheeseburger crown. In Louisville, Kentucky, there is an argument that the owner of Kaelin's Restaurant, Charles Kaelin, deserves the title instead. While Kaelin apparently started serving his burgers a good decade after Sternberger, many credit him as being the man who helped to popularize the cheeseburger as well as giving it the actual name "cheeseburger." So while he isn't usually touted as having made the first ever cheeseburger, he's more celebrated as the first person to bring it to the masses. 

The issue with Sternberger's cheeseburger origin story is that much of it has just come from word of mouth years later rather than official records from the time. So it is a little difficult to confirm if he truly was the first person to throw a slice of cheese on a burger or not, despite the fact that his story remains one of the most widely accepted versions of events. No doubt, it certainly helped cement the cheeseburger's place in American culinary history, alongside Kaelin's popularization of it a decade later. This unintentional joint effort sparked an entire foodie obsession. While there are many different types of cheese you can use on a burger, from classic American and cheddar to Swiss or even blue cheese, just the act of adding melting cheese on top has become so commonplace that it's hard to imagine hamburgers any other way.

The truth is, there may not be a clear answer about who made the cheeseburger what it is today because, as food historians often point out, popular dishes rarely have a single inventor. It's more than possible that multiple people had the same idea independently, especially in a time when things were much less documented. But regardless of who actually invented it, we're grateful they did — because while there is no such thing as too many toppings on a burger, if you're going to pick just one, it has to be a slice of melted cheese.