Andrew F. Smith loves to write and talk about the intersecting of food and society. A scholar and lecturer, he is the editor-in-chief of “The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America” (Oxford University Press, 2004) and “The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink” (Oxford University Press, 2007). Among his many other books are “Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment” (The University of South Carolina Press, 2001) and “The Turkey: An American Story” (University of Illinois Press, 2006). “Hamburger: A Global History” will be published later this year (Reaktion Books, 2008).

Q. How did food become the focus of your attention?

A. Totally by accident, which I think happens in most of our lives. I got a grant from UNICEF International to teach young students—fourth-graders—how to understand the world. I hadn’t been in 4th grade for a few years, so I started talking to kids, and they really get excited about food. So I created a map of the world and put a chocolate bar in the middle of it and asked where does chocolate come from, and where does sugar come from, and what portion of the price goes here or there, and so on. UNICEF published 100,000 copies, and the Japanese and the French reprinted it.

I found you could talk about a lot of things with food; it was a tool to talk with people about a lot of other things, and that’s what it is for me today.

Q. You must have found that people are happy to talk about hamburgers.

A. Oh yes. I talked to Jacques Pépin, and he said: “Oh, hamburgers! There’s a place in such and such with great hamburgers; have you been there?” Everybody seems to want to talk about food in general, which is great.

But I’ve been interested in hamburgers since I was about 4 or 5 years old. I think that’s the first memory I have of food outside the home. It was a street vendor that my parents liked and at that time it was five burgers for a buck. And I ate at McDonald’s in 1955 …

Q. You were an early adapter!

A. It was an incredible experience. The street vendor had an apron splotched with grease and he was nice; he’d talk with you as he flipped his burgers. But with McDonald’s it was so totally different. It was clean. The teenage boys who operated it had these spiffy white uniforms and there was the military precision of people running around. The street vendor took 10 minutes [to serve a burger], which to me then was an eternity, and here was McDonald’s where there were 20 people in line but in 15 minutes you had your burgers and you were eating them in the car.

Burgers have always fascinated me, so in one sense [the book] was pulling together a lot of history that I was interested in.

Q. What that you discovered surprised you?

A. What I learned was that almost all stories you hear about origins of the hamburger are wrong or there is no evidence for them; I’ll phrase it that way.

The first evidence I found was in 1892 and the hamburger was a street food, which doesn’t surprise me at all. It starts on the street; it’s when vendors have the ability to have a hot grill and heat food that you begin to have hamburgers. Obviously [the vendors] didn’t have utensils or plates, so you have to put what was called Hamburg steak at that time into something, and a bun makes a lot of sense.

Q. Was this on the East Coast?

A. No, the amazing thing is that it was all over the place. The earliest references are in the Midwest, but a few months later it’s in Reno, Nev., and Los Angeles and Honolulu, which wasn’t part of the United States then. Only later does it come to the East Coast; the East Coast was sort of a late adapter.

I think hamburgers start off as a Midwestern food. Obviously that’s where the beef industry is and you have easy access to all the foods that go into a burger.

Q. As “street food,” hamburgers weren’t considered haute cuisine, I’m assuming.

A. Hamburgers had a bad reputation. There were rumors about ground rats and dogs [in hamburger], some of which were true. And if you grind beef and don’t immediately serve it, it can turn all sorts of colors, so people started adding preservatives, many of which were unhealthy. When the Pure Food and Drugs Act came along in 1906, there was evidence of serious problems with hamburger across the United States. It wasn’t just a myth; it was reality.

Hamburgers really don’t get a good reputation until White Castle comes along in 1921 [in Wichita, Kan.].

Q. How did it change perceptions?

A. First, they created a white building, so you had the purity of it. And they had glass—which McDonald’s would build on later—so you can see them making the burgers. Then they intentionally had beef delivered twice a day so you could see them grinding burger. Cleanliness was a major part of their corporate ethos and the white uniforms made a big difference in how people looked at burgers.

Without White Castle, I don’t think hamburgers would be in the position they’re in today.

Q. Is the rise of chains such as McDonald’s the big next step up?

A. There were other places that began in the 1930s that are still around today. My parents began their first love affair at Bob’s Big Boy [in California]. But in terms of massive production of burgers, it’s McDonald’s.

I met [co-founder] Richard McDonald when I lived in San Bernardino for a while. He was still there after [he and his brother, Maurice] sold out to Ray Kroc. Their goal was to take what White Castle did and make a much more efficient operation out of it.

Their real hero was Henry Ford and the assembly line, and that’s what they did. They asked what the most efficient way to make hamburgers and sell in volume would be. And their operation—as modified by Ray Kroc—was suburban, where White Castle had focused on inner cities. But in America in the 1950s, inner cities were collapsing, so the McDonald brothers and Ray Kroc focused on suburbs.

Q. Have you studied the impact that chain restaurants have had on American society and what Americans eat?

A. Well, there are problems with the industrialization of food, sure, and [those problems have] been pointed out by a lot of other people, but I think the major companies are very sensitive about their customers. If they’ve been criticized, they have changed their operations.

Obviously, chain restaurants produce quality food that tastes good—or else people don’t buy it—at a relatively low price. I think that’s an amazing part of the story; a good part of the story. It means anyone can go into a McDonald’s or other chain restaurants for a good meal with beef and bread and vegetables at low cost.

The large chain restaurants have created niches for small chains, and the small chains have been able to do things the big chains can’t. The small chains have created a huge diversity [of foods].

Q. You must have a favorite burger or favorite burger chain.

A. I put 10 recipes in [“Hamburger: A Global History”]. There’s the recipe for the Five Napkin Burger that I love. To me, if juice doesn’t pour out the other end, a burger’s not good.

Q. Where can I find that burger?

A. A little restaurant, Nice Matin, in New York City. And as for chains, I do love In-N-Out Burger. Part of it is the secret menu. The code words and all add a little flavor. And I like the idea of a family-owned operation; it just seems like a different experience.

There are other chains I like as well. Whataburger in Texas. And nutrition isn’t my main concern when I’m having a burger, so Hardee’s Monster Thickburger, I like that! Carl’s Jr.’s Double Six Dollar Burger is good. And I love Bob’s Big Boy and some of the ’30s burgers that survive today. Every time I go to Los Angeles I try to go to Tommy’s. It’s partly the atmosphere: There’s no place to sit and there’s always a line.

As a whole, I think all the chains have good burgers. If they aren’t good, the chains go out of business.

Q. You did burger condiments first, writing a book about ketchup.

A. Actually, first I’d done a book on tomatoes, and at the end I had all these recipes for things like walnut ketchup and fish ketchup and peach ketchup. I wanted to make some sense out of it, and lo and behold, I found that tomato ketchup was really the end of a long line of ketchups that most likely came from Indonesia through British colonization.

Q. What has piqued your interest for your next book?

A. I’m just putting the finishing touches on “Eating History: 30 Events That Shaped What Americans Eat Today.” McDonald’s is one of the 30. I tried to go back and say, 200 years ago everybody ate organic food; everybody ate locally and seasonally. Since then, Americans made choices to do something different. So I was trying to ask where did we make those decisions and what were their effects. And it was pretty easy to spot them.

Contact writer at shume@reedbusiness.com