Today when we hear about nutburgers we typically assume it's a vegetarian patty that features nuts in its mixture, but when nutburgers were introduced in Southern California in the 1930s they were something completely different. They were beef hamburgers topped with chopped nuts and served on a toasted bun.
During the 1930s and 1940s, newspaper columnists that covered Hollywood reported on the celebrities who went in big for the nutburger including George Raft, Clark Gable, Groucho Marx, Mary Pickford, and James Cagney. Advertisements at the time called nutburgers “Hollywood’s Most Famous Sandwich.” Notable Hollywood novels, including Aldous Huxley’s Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust, and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, mention the nutburger and/or the nutburger stand. This indicates the trendiness of nutburgers at the time, but also perhaps the eccentricity of Hollywood to outside observers.
Gates Nut Kettle, which was on Sunset Blvd near Doheny, was the popular purveyor of nutburgers. According to a 1935 Los Angeles Times article about (what we now call) the Sunset Strip, Frank W. Gates opened the Nut Kettle in 1928. He later added a Palm Springs location. When he passed away in 1937, his oldest son Frank Jr. was in charge of the Los Angeles location, while his son John ran Palm Springs. Thankfully at least one customer swiped a menu from the Los Angeles location and wrote down the ingredients on a Nut Kettle nutburger. The hamburger was thin, the lettuce was shredded fine, the mayonnaise was spread easy, the mustard was spread easy, the relish was “fine pickle,” and the nuts were chopped fine.
But what type of nuts were used? While I wasn’t able to find a reference to the kinds of nuts used at the Nut Kettle, recipes in newspapers and cookbooks that I found were varied– peanuts, walnuts, or pecans were used to top a hamburger patty. I wanted to make the Nut Kettle nutburger at home and decided to use peanuts. One burger was made just as handwritten on the menu (with separate ingredients) and one burger was made with the toppings combined (which was described in a 1940 fan magazine). The burger with separate ingredients definitely won out. You could actually taste each addition, whereas the burger with the ingredients combined was not as memorable. In addition to the original, the Nut Kettle also sold the nutburger with cheese, and with cheese, tomato, and bacon.
Hankering for a more contemporary nutburger? Your Los Angeles Public Library card gives you access to the Los Angeles Times archive where I found the August 15, 1991 Culinary SOS column, written by Rose Dosti, that offered a recipe for a nutburger from the Follow Your Heart restaurant. Their vegetable and bulgur burger features raw almonds, raw cashews, and raw walnuts, as well as sunflower seeds. I haven’t tried it yet but I am still thinking about that Nut Kettle nutburger….
