ANCIENT GREASE
The History of the Seventh Wonder of Philadelphia – The Cheese
Steak

Prehistoric man was a hunter-gatherer. Studies of skull and jaw
fragments confirm that he was carnivorous, and drawings found on
cave walls indicate that he cooked beef on a rudimentary type of
grill using a primitive spatula made from animal bones – a
practice which continues today in some parts of the world.
Anthropologists recently found a tribe of tailgaters cooking meat
in this fashion outside Lincoln Financial Field.

The dawn of the Neolithic period saw the cultivation of crops and
the domestication of animals. It was not long before bread,
cheese and onions were produced throughout the Near East. A
beverage similar to cherry soda was developed in Mesopotamia
around 5000-6000 B.C.
Millennia passed. Finally, in the 18th Century, the Earl of
Sandwich – one of the Age of Enlightenment’s most gifted men
– demonstrated that meat and other organic matter could be
placed between two slices of bread to create a “sandwich”.

Fast-forward to 1930, a mere century and a half later, when a
brilliant but humble South Philadelphia hot dog merchant named
Pat Olivieri happened upon a discovery that would forever change
human history. One day, for no particular reason at all, Olivieri
decided to cook some sliced beef on his hot dog grill and place
it, along with a few onions, on an Italian roll. A cabdriver who
frequented Olivieri’s hot dog stand saw Olivieri eating the
curious-looking sandwich and asked for one to go. Pat’s Steaks
and the “steak sandwich” were born.
A few years later, someone – perhaps Olivieri himself, or
perhaps Chink, or perhaps someone else (but in all likelihood a
Philadelphian) – discovered that the flavor of the “steak
sandwich” could be further enhanced through the addition of
cheese. Thus was born the “cheese steak sandwich”, better
known as the “cheese steak” or simply the “steak”.

Lou Fufken, a resident of West Olney, observed the increasing
frequency with which sandwich breakthroughs were occurring, and
theorized that the trend would continue at an ever more rapid
pace – and that in the future there would be a new sandwich
breakthrough every 18 months. “Fufken’s Law” was in many
ways similar to “Moore’s Law”, which holds that computer
chip processing power will double every 18 months.

It turned out Fufken’s Law was wrong – which is not
surprising, considering Fufken was a stupid drunk and nobody in
his neighborhood ever listened to him anyway. There were no more
breakthroughs. The cheese steak as it existed in the mid-20th
Century is pretty much the sandwich it is today, save for a few
interesting modifications made possible by Kraft’s introduction
of Cheez Whiz in the 1950s.

And there you have it. Behold the Seventh Wonder of Philadelphia
– the Cheese Steak! (But don’t behold it too long. It’s
getting cold and some of the Cheez Whiz is running off the edge
of the counter and onto your shoes.)