This Food in History #21 Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Mar 30

Mar 30 This Food in History #21 Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Introduction

Hello and welcome to this episode of This Food in History! Today’s food is one I have enjoyed since I was a child thanks to my Grandma. She would order it at every county fair we visited and when Culver’s came to town, we’d enjoy it year round. Today we are looking at the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich!

History of Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin sandwiches are a very Midwestern dish and when they break containment, people tend to poke fun at their distinct look. Pork tenderloin is pounded flat and this results in a very wide hunk of meat that is battered, breaded, and fried. Served with a single hamburger bun most commonly, the bun is overpowered by the tenderloin and many first timers don’t know how to approach it. My Grandma was always a fold over type for the largest ones, but I just eat my way into the center.

So where did it come from? Overwhelmingly people all point the same origin out of Indiana. Nicholas Freinstein in Huntington, Indiana was the child of German Immigrants. He grew up to be a restaurateur and had a burger pushcart in 1904. Thanks to his German ancestry he knew of a dish named weiner schnitzel that was served on a plate. This Austrian dish was breaded veal, pan fried and served with things like gravy and other toppings and eaten with a knife and fork. As a cart owner, he adjusted the dish to use pork as a more relatable and available meat, and tossed it onto a hamburger bun to continue the trend of sandwiches. Thus the pork Tenderloin sandwich was born!

His cart’s popularity rose enough that it moved to a shack and by 1908, he was able to open Nick’s Kitchen in downtown Huntington. This restaurant is still open today and has only changed owners five times. In the 1950s the new owner updated the establishment into a full service restaurant and stopped serving the food on wax paper, street food style.

Nowadays you can find a version of pork tenderloin all over Midwestern states, with Indiana, Illinois and Iowa being called the Pork Tenderloin Corridor, and spreading even further as the Wisconsin chain Culver’s continues to expand. However, Iowa also calls for a claim on inventing pork tenderloin sandwiches. They attribute it to Czech neighborhoods in Cedar Rapids. However Pork tenderloin connoisseur and historian David Stovall who created a massive Facebook group called Pursuing Breaded Pork Tenderloins that has over 100k followers and was paused in 2024 states, “As far as I can tell, there is no written record of a pork tenderloin sandwich that predates Nick's Kitchen." Lindsey Skeen of the Indiana Foodways Alliance does say “it’s debatable that Nick’s was the first place to produce” but there aren’t records to indicate for sure if Iowa or elsewhere beat Nick to it. Even Texas has a version where beef was used.

Making the schnitzel with pork was a huge factor to help the popularity of the dish. Historians note that Indiana economic development and in turn settlement, was attributed to pigs. The first settlers helped food industries grow due to their production of pork. The jumbo size and relatively cheap price which matched that of other sandwiches helped advertise the dish as it was filling and a lot of bang for your buck. This was great for working class patrons.

So did Nick really invent it or did other German immigrants come to the same methods to sell this dish from their homeland? What is weiner schnitzel?

History of Schnitzel

We can travel back across the ocean and time to take a look. First, schnitzel is a thin slice of meat. When it’s wiener schnitzel, it’s a breaded, pan fried, veal cutlet from Austria. Where did it come from?

Interestingly, I found that folks have a legend that has been debunked but still shared, and two other points of entry for schnitzel. So let’s take a look.

The legend is that Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz brought the recipe from Italy to Vienna in 1857. While reporting to Emperor of Austria Franz Joseph I, he mentioned a tasty veal dish and the Emperor requested it be brought back for him to try. This Italian Cotoletta alla Milanese was brought over the Alps and introduced to Austria. This dish can be found in 1869 Italian gastronomy book, the ‘guida gastronomica d’Italia’ mentioning this tale. However scholars found references that breaded cutlets date back much further in written history. Backhendl, a deep fried breaded chicken dish, is mentioned in 1719 cookbooks.

In Italy, documents dated to the year 1148 AD have been found in the archives of Saint Ambrose, Milan, that reference a Latin name ‘lumbolo cum panitio’ which translates to ‘little chops with breadcrumbs’. A famous cookbook by Apicius, dated to the 1st century has Romans tenderizing their meat by pounding it, rolling it in breadcrumbs, and frying. The Romans then brought this dish north during their many war campaigns.

In Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 12th century, the Jewish people also had versions of schnitzel.

In the Renaissance, adding gold to food was popular in Venice. This spread North through Italy but the practice became forbidden in 1514. This leads to a popularity in Gold foods and chefs found methods from the Jewish Byzantine to create schnitzel with its golden crusts.

In the 1700s during the Baroque era, Conrad Hagger wrote in the Saltzburgisches Kochbuch about a schnitzel dish that just doesn’t have the veal. It was in 1774, with Jean Neubauer of Munich called for veal in a recipe he dubbed “Gebachenes auf flamändisch” — “fried à la Flanders” that we got a version with veal from Flanders.

Maria Anna Neudecker’s Allerneuestem allgemeinen Kochbuch in 1831 is the first book to actually call it Wiener Schnitzel.

As you can see, breaded and fried meat goes through many journeys to become the Wiener Schnitzel that makes it to America to become the Pork Tenderloin. It also has counterparts all over the world.

Tonkatsu is a fried pork cutlet from Japanese cuisine, made thicker than its pork tenderloins cousins.

In Israel, schnitzel, due to kashrut laws that forbid eating pork, is the local version made of chicken breast

Egypt has a chicken schnitzel dish known as ‘frakh pané’.

In the UK in Middlesbrough, the parmo is a breaded chicken or pork cutlet smothered in white sauce and cheddar cheese

Find me a place that doesn’t have a fried chicken dish.

So Pork Tenderloin sandwiches have long reaching roots, potentially back to the Roman empire, but definitely in Austria. It traveled to the states through German immigrants and was adapted for American sensibilities to become a Midwestern sandwich that is a spectacle and has a loyal fanbase that will order it anywhere to find their favorite version.

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