Stephen McGinty: A taste for Burger King does not define the literature of JD Salinger

IN the novel, Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield attends, prior to expulsion, the Pencey Preparatory School for Boys in Pennsylvania where the kitchens serve steak on Saturday night.

This is a cynical piece of scheduling designed to impress the parents, who visit on Sunday, of the quality of their sons' supper. Young master Caulfield, weary of such a "phoney" charade prefers instead to slouch off for a "couple of hamburgers" in New York City, and in so doing elevates the burger above sirloin for searing authenticity.

The revelation, on Thursday, that the reclusive author was a genuine fan of Burger King means surely it is just a matter of time before a PhD student embarks on: "Ketchup on the Rye: The Figurative and Allegorical role of pressed meat patties in the works of JD Salinger".

Like JD Salinger I am beguiled by ground beef on a bun. If a hamburger is listed on a menu, I struggle to look beyond. If sentenced to death, my last meal would be a hamburger, topped with cheese, fried onions and bacon. I know it's uncool, and that my culinary ambition should stretch further than McDonald's, but no French cuisine ever satisfied me like America's heart-clogging gift to the world.

Granted, I can see why others, depressed by the average Scot's growing resemblance to a human blimp, would wish to run Ronald McDonald out of town. Yet rather than bore you with the latest obesity figures - trust me, they're bad - let's go with Socrates' maxim, "moderation in all things", and argue that the hamburger is not a source of grave iniquity, but a noble feast, rich in history, strong in taste and worthy of its own pedestal among the culinary greats.

In 1904, at the St Louis World Fair, Fletcher Davis, a sandwich-maker from Athens, Texas, displayed a dish of ground beef, pressed into a patty, cooked, then served between two slices of bread. "Old Dave's Hamburger Stand", as his stall was called, attracted the attention of a reporter from the New York Tribune, whose dispatch alerted the world to the hamburger as "an innovation of a food vendor". Unfortunately, the recognition didn't do Davis any favours. After 20 years in the business, his short trip to St Louis allowed competitors back home in Texas to snaffle his customers. He spent the rest of his life toiling in a pottery factory.

Whether Fletcher Davis was indeed the first hamburger vendor remains a matter of great debate, well, great debate among folk who care about the provenance of their favourite meal. Charles and Frank Menches from Stark County, Ohio, said they made one in 1885 after buying 10lbs of beef from a Hamburg butcher.Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, said he made a hamburger sandwich with the trimmings of steak in 1900. Finally, Charlie Nagreen, a resident of Seymour, Wisconsin, was said to have flattened a meatball between two slices of bread in 1885. To this day, the town of Seymour claims to be "the home of the hamburger" and in 1989 the townsfolk made the world's largest, all 5,520 lbs of it.

McDonald's, however, was unimpressed. The world's biggest hamburger chain, opened in 1940 by Dick and Mac McDonald, sides with Fletcher Davis. Yet the battle is merely over who first thought of slipping the meat between bread. The actual Hamburger has been around since Mongol and Tartar tribes shredded low quality meat to make it more digestible. Their practice arrived in Germany in the 14th century, where it was, in turn, flavoured with spices, then either cooked or eaten raw. The name came from its popularity among the poor of the German city where it was called Hamburg steak. In the 19th century the dish arrived in New York with German immigrants.

Today, many Americans would prefer the burger was sent back. The gluttony epidemic that has turned America into the fattest nation on Earth has been fuelled by beef in a bun.

The documentary, Super Size Me, focused on the health effects of over-indulgence when the film-maker lived off a diet of McDonald's for a month. Yet in moderation, the burger is the perfect meal. There is a primitive delight in grabbing that sucker with both hands and biting through bun, lettuce, tomato, cheese and sauce to the meat.

And Mr Salinger agreed. In a letter to his friend, Donald Hartog, whom he first met in 1937 when both were 18-year-olds studying German in Vienna, the author praised Burger King for flame-grilling their patties and so rendering them "better than just edible".

We should listen to the author's advice when it comes to the provenance of a cheeseburger, for not only was he the son of a kosher cheesemonger, but he was in Vienna on the instruction of his father to study the meat-importing business also and so recognised a quality haunch. The author's favourite burger chain first opened in 1953, the year he published Nine Stories, a short story collection (he had to wait a further four years for the advent of the Whopper).

Whenever I visit America I make a point of trying the burgers in chains unfamiliar to these shores. In Las Vegas it's the In-N-Out burger chain, which has no freezers or microwaves and makes each patty from scratch while you wait. In Los Angeles my teeth sank through strata of pepper sauce, Swiss cheese and mushrooms to the meaty core of a Johnny Rocket burger. Wendy's square patties just didn't seem right, Carl Jnr's were too weak and Jack in the Box's too paltry, I became a fan of the "slider" - mini-hamburgers from the White Castle chain.What is interesting about the new revelation - the author is also revealed to be a fan of Tim Henman, Upstairs, Downstairs and Saga-style coach tours to the Grand Canyon - is that Salinger had at various points in his life been a vegetarian, an essential quality of an adherent to the many eastern philosophies to which he dedicated himself over the decades. But it would appear that the lure of the perfectly grilled beef patties persistently pulled him back. For it is honest blue collar food without the "phoniness" against which he and his famous character railed. Or is it?

One hopes Mr Salinger was unaware of the news that his favourite chain was guilty of such falsehoods as would make young Holden beat his chest and weep. In 2007 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against Burger King that, in comparison to the tall tower of meat, lettuce, tomato and bun featured in television adverts for the fast food franchise, investigators discovered that an actual store-bought Double Whopper burger came up short.

It is said that the camera puts on several pounds, but the ASA insisted the advert could not be re-broadcast until the size of the burger was reduced to correspond more closely to the product. To check the veracity of the chain's products, two ASA investigators had purchased two Double Whoppers at separate London restaurants and, after a careful examination, concluded that not only were the actual burgers smaller and thinner than those in the advert, but that the salad topping was more meagre than the thick and lush vegetation piled on top of the TV Double Whopper.

Still, next time the mood takes me I'll steer myself towards Burger King and order one in memory of Mr Salinger. Pass the ketchup.