Big Mac
The Big Mac , formerly also known as Big Mäc in Germany , is a double-decker cheeseburger variant from the fast-food group McDonald’s .
History of the Big Mac
It was first introduced on the American market in 1968, in response to the Burger King advertising initiative for their Whopper : “The bigger the burger, the better the burger” . Jim Delligatti (1918-2016), the operator of a McDonald's restaurant in Uniontown in the US state of Pennsylvania , had developed it a year earlier .
The big Hamburger Royal was only launched in the USA in 1971 as a quarter pounder ; In contrast to the Big Mac, it is single-story, but wider. A similar hamburger from the fast food chain Burger King, also with two slices of minced meat, is called Big King and was only sold some time later.
The Big Mac Museum Restaurant opened on August 23, 2007 in North Huntingdon , Pennsylvania .
On January 15, 2019, the European Union Intellectual Property Office upheld a complaint from Irish burger chain Supermac's and denied McDonald's the trademark rights to the term. The decision concerned the use of the name "Big Mac" as a restaurant name. The authority justified this with the fact that the US chain had not seriously used the brand. McDonald's has the option to take legal action against the decision and this has already been announced. The company still has enforceable trademark law at EU level .
preparation
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From bottom to top, a Big Mac consists of the following components:
- Bottom of the hamburger or soft roll or bun
- special Big Mac sauce (10 milliliters ), a variant of the Thousand Island dressing
- Onion cubes made from rehydrated onion flakes produced by freeze-drying (total 3.5 grams )
- Iceberg lettuce in strips (12.5 grams)
- Cheddar cheese slice
- a slice of fried minced beef, called beef patty (approx. 45 grams before preparation)
- Middle part of the bun
- Sauce (as above)
- Diced onion (as above)
- Iceberg lettuce (as above)
- Pickled cucumber slices
- fried minced beef (as above)
- Cover of the hamburger bun, sprinkled with sesame seeds
The sauce is pressed out by hand from calibrated cartridges. This is to ensure that every Big Mac contains the same amount. The onion cubes, pickled cucumber slices and the minced meat are identical to those of the company's own hamburger or cheeseburger. The salad is identical to the salad from the Hamburger Royal TS .
A special toaster has been developed for the production of the Big Mac, which toasts both the bottom and top on one side and the intermediate slice on both sides. A maximum of six, but normally four, Big Macs are manufactured in parallel and then packed in boxes.
Nutritional information
According to the nutritional value table from McDonald's, based on the federal food code, the following values result for a Big Mac weighing 219 grams: Energy 2,073 kJ / 495 kcal , 31.1 g fat , 40 g carbohydrates and 25.1 g protein .
Variations
As a variant of the Big Mac, the Double Big Mac is offered in some countries with four (instead of two) 45.4 gram pieces of meat and an additional slice of cheese. It is available u. a. in Canada, Thailand and Australia; for a period it was also available in the United States.
In Israel, the BigMac is made without cheese, as Jewish food laws prohibit the combination of meat and dairy products.
In India, the Big Mac is sold in a variant with chicken instead of beef and with a different sauce and tomatoes than Chicken Maharaja Mac , as the consumption of beef is forbidden in Hinduism . This also functions as a replacement for the Big Mac in the Big Mac index .
Big Mac Index
Due to the worldwide fame of the Big Mac, the British business magazine The Economist publishes the so-called Big Mac Index , an index of the cost of living that is based on the price of the Big Mac in different countries. This made use of two characteristics that are characteristic of fast food: good availability in many places and an almost identical product everywhere, which is mostly made from regional raw materials and thus reduces the influence of world market prices on this index.
literature
- Jeffrey Tennyson: Hamburger Heaven . Ullstein, 1995.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jörg Isert: McDonald's is doing away with “Big Mäc” and “Fishmäc”. In: Welt Online. June 1, 2007, accessed January 17, 2019 .
- ↑ https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/16517
- ↑ https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/markenrecht-mcdonald-s-verliert-markenstreit-um-big-mac-15994063.html
- ↑ Kathrin Werner: McDonald's loses trademark rights on the Big Mac. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . January 17, 2019, accessed January 17, 2019 .
- ↑ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/15/mcdonalds-loses-eu-trademark-battle-over-the-big-mac.html
- ↑ https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/000062638
- ↑ Ingredients and ingredients for standard products. (pdf) In: mcdonalds.at. P. 3 , accessed June 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Nutritional tables. McDonald's Germany, 2010
- ↑ The World's Most Original Burgers - BusinessWeek ( Memento of July 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
