Ernest Hemingway always knew the right thing to write, drink, and eat. And now, the JFK Presidential Library and Museum has dropped a recipe for a delicious burger by Papa himself. Versions of this recipe have popped up before, actually, but this document has Hemingway's later editing marks on it, complete with characteristic additions like "Wild West" to the name. It also comes accompanied by a swath of other documents including a confiscation notice for his unregistered rifles that also congratulates him on winning the Nobel Prize the same year.

This may be the finest short argument against eating a fast-food burger written before fast food was really a thing:

From Experimenting, Papa's Favorite Wild West Hamburger

There is no reason why a fried hamburger has to turn out gray, greasy, paper-thin and tasteless. You can add all sorts of goodies and flavors to the ground beef -- minced mushrooms, cocktail sauce, minced garlic and onion, ground almonds, a big dollop of Piccalilli, or whatever your eye lights on. Papa prefers this combination.

Ingredients

1lb. ground lean beef

2 cloves, minced garlic

2 little green onions, finely chopped

parsley [sic]

1 heaping teaspoon, India relish

2 tablespoons, capers

1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands Sage [sic]

1/2 teaspoon Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning

1/2 teaspoon Spice Islands Mei Yen Pepper**

salt and pepper

1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork

About 1/3 cup dry red or white wine

1 tablespoon cooking oil

What to do

Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible.

Now make four fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying pan hot but not smoking when you drop the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over , put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy.

*Spice Islands has discontinued this product, but Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan at The Paris Review showed us how to recreate it:

• 9 parts salt

• 9 parts sugar

• 2 parts MSG

If a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon Mei Yen Powder, use 2/3 tsp of the dry recipe (above) mixed with 1/8 tsp of soy sauce.

Eric Vilas-Boas Assistant Editor Eric Vilas-Boas is a former editor at Esquire, where he managed the magazine's social media accounts, helped edit the website, and has written stories about comic books, martinis, and Ernest Hemingway's hamburger acumen.

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