Early 20th century American cookbooks offer plenty of sloppy-joe type recipes, though they go by different titles: Toasted Deviled Hamburgers,[2] Chopped Meat Sandwiches,[3] Hamburg a la Creole,[4] Beef Mironton,[5] and Minced Beef Spanish Style.[6]
Marilyn Brown, Director of the Consumer Test Kitchen at H.J. Heinz in Pittsburgh, says their research at the Carnegie Library suggests that the sloppy joe began in a Sioux City, Iowa, cafe as a "loose meat sandwich" in 1930, the creation of a cook named Joe.[7]
References to sloppy joes as sandwiches begin by the 1940s. One example is a 1944 Coshocton Tribune ad under the heading "Good Things to Eat" says "Sloppy Joes' - 10c - Originated in Cuba - You'll ask for more - The Hamburg Shop" and elsewhere on the same page, "Hap is introducing that new sandwich at The Hamburg Shop - Sloppy Joes - 10c." [8]
The term sloppy Joe's had an earlier definition of any cheap restaurant or lunch counter serving cheap food quickly, since 1940[9] or a type of casual clothing.[10]
Food companies began producing packaged sloppy joe sauce, such as Manwich, by the 1960s.