Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Sandwiches

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sandwiches are one of the most popular types of food in the world. They're incredibly easy to make, can be incredibly cheap, and they come in numerous varieties. Yet the humble sandwiches also the subject of a great deal of controversy. What type of sandwiches best? Where did sandwiches come from? And perhaps the greatest question of all is a hot dog, a sandwich. Learn more about sandwiches and their history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:41 throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I'm going to assume that everyone listening to this knows what a sandwich is and the vast majority of you have probably eaten some sort of sandwich at some point in your life. However, despite everyone's familiarity with sandwiches, it's probably necessary to define what a sandwich is. And this is actually the first problem that we're going to encounter in this episode because despite everyone's intuitive understanding of what a sandwich is, there is disagreement about the definition.

Starting point is 00:01:30 One of the common definitions you'll find is the one from the Cambridge Dictionary, which defines a sandwich as, quote, two pieces of bread with food such as cheese, salad, or meat between them. This definition seems all well and good. But soon you'll realize that there are many things called sandwiches that do not necessarily meet this definition. An open-faced sandwich is just stuff piled on a single piece of bread. There are ice cream sandwiches, which are ice cream between two pieces of a cake-like substance, not bread. It's kind of a sandwich, or at least sandwich-esque, but not a sandwich in the strict definition of the term. For the purpose of this episode, I am going to.

Starting point is 00:02:11 with the dictionary definition, but as we'll see, there are many edge cases in classifying sandwiches. So, with that being said, what is the history of sandwiches and who invented them? And the truth is, we have no clue who invented the sandwich. Putting something between two pieces of bread is not rocket science, and the first person to have done this was most likely someone in antiquity. It also isn't like there are fossilized sandwiches out there that archaeologists can dig up. However, the first recorded instance of someone mentioning something that we can point to as being like a sandwich dates back to the first century BC when the famous Jewish rabbi, Hillel the Elder, is reported to have wrapped lamb meat and bitter herbs between two pieces of matzah during Passover. Mata is bread, albeit unleavened bread, so it's kind of more like a cracker than the leavened bread that you'll normally see on a sandwich. And this is one of those gray areas when it comes to the definition of a sandwich.

Starting point is 00:03:14 The bigger point, however, is that this establishes at least some sort of point in history that we can be sure people were making sandwich adjacent creations. However, given that people were making bread for thousands of years before the first century BC, it is highly likely that there were some sort of sandwich creations being made long before. In the Middle Ages, it was common to use what was known as a trencher. A trencher was nothing more than a large slab of usually stale bread that was used as a type of plate. Food was put on the trencher, and then the bread would absorb any fats or juices from the food. Trenchers would then either be fed to dogs, given to the poor, or eaten yourself, depending on how rich or poor you were. Again, in a way, if you accept that an open-faced sandwich is a sandwich, then a trencher would have been a type of sandwich. If not a sandwich, then it was at least an early proto sandwich that involved putting stuff on bread.

Starting point is 00:04:12 The development of what we would probably recognize as a sandwich, or at least the popularity of what we would call a sandwich, didn't come about until the 18th century. Legend has it that the popularity of sandwiches came about from a man named John Montague, a.k.a. the fourth Earl of Sandwich. Before I get into who John Montague was, I should note what the earldom of Sandwich is. The Earldom of Sandwich is a hereditary peerage established in 1660 in England. It was given to Admiral Sir Edward Montague.

Starting point is 00:04:47 He sided with the parliamentarians during the English Civil War, but after Oliver Cromwell's death, he helped restore the monarchy. In honor of his service, he was given a peerage, and the region that the peerage was named after was one of the most important ports in England at that. time, the town of Sandwich. Sandwich is located in southeast England, not far from the white cliffs of Dover. Its importance as a port at the time had to do with its close proximity to the coast of France. The word sandwich, with reference to the town, comes from the word sand and the old Anglo-Saxon suffix, WIC. WIC means a dwelling or fortified place where trade takes place. WIC later morphed into

Starting point is 00:05:30 which, so Sandwich means a market town on sandy soil. So how does a word meaning market town on sandy soil wind up describing a food that's something between two slices of bread? Well, that brings me back to John Montague, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. According to legend, the Earl of Sandwich was a compulsive gambler. He would often have marathon gambling sessions where he wouldn't leave the table for 24 hours straight. During these gambling bouts, he would often order his valet to bring him two pieces of bread with some roast beef in the middle. This was simply his go-to meal while he was sitting at the card

Starting point is 00:06:09 table. Eventually, it became popular enough that other people ordered the same thing, and when they ordered it, they would just say, same as sandwich, and the name stuck to that kind of food. You might have heard this story about how the sandwich got its name before. However, like many stories, the truth often turns out to be something different than the legend. So how accurate is the story about the origins of the sandwich? The first reference to the word sandwich as a food comes from the diary of the English historian Edward Gibbon. In his entry on November 24, 1762, he wrote that he saw men eating, quote, a cold bit of meat or a sandwich. Gibbon's reference to a sandwich doesn't confirm or deny the origin with the Earl of Sandwich.

Starting point is 00:06:56 But the time of the mention is concurrent with when the legend says it would have started coming into use. The origin of the actual legend regarding the Earl of Sandwich comes from a French writer named Pierre Jean Grozley. He was visiting London in 1762, and he wrote his observations down in a book in French titled Lundress in 1770. That was then translated into English in 1772 under the title, a tour to London, or new observations on England and its inhabitants.

Starting point is 00:07:27 In it, he tells the story of the Earl of Sandwich ordering meats between slices of bread, but he never refers to it as a sandwich. Historians seem to have no doubt that the word sandwich came from the Earl of Sandwich. The only discrepancy I found seems to come from Sandwich's biographer, who claims that he spent too much time working to have been at the gambling tables. So the fourth Earl of Sandwich was probably the Sandwich's namesake, and he helped popularize it, but he did not invent it. By the late 18th century, the sandwich had become a thing, and there was now an English word to describe it. It was noted that in 1789, King George III and his family would often take sandwiches with them on outings, giving the food a royal seal of approval.

Starting point is 00:08:13 What really turbocharged the popularity of sandwiches, however, was the industrial rink. revolution. In an agricultural society, there was always time to go home from the field to eat a proper meal. But when you were working in a factory, there was no time to go home and eat in the middle of the workday. You needed something quick and easy to eat, and sandwiches were the perfect solution. By 1850, there were 70 street vendors in London who were recorded as selling ham and cheese sandwiches. Around the same time, establishes began springing up all over Europe that sold sandwiches as their primary product. Many of the sandwiches served were often made using cheaper cuts of meat, such as liver or salted beef. Sandwich consumption increased again in the late

Starting point is 00:08:57 19th century when they became popularized in America. New types of sandwiches that were more elaborate were developed. In the 1890s, a new sandwich called a club sandwich began appearing in New York menus. The club sandwich is believed to have originated at either the Union Club in New York City or the Saratoga Club in Saratoga Springs. In 1901, the Boston Cooking School magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics published the first recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Throughout the early 20th century, a host of very similar sandwiches were popularized, and they went by many names, including submarine, hoagies, grinders, Italian,

Starting point is 00:09:36 and depending on the contents of the sandwich, po-boys. What they all had in common is that they're rather long and used to, usually used French or Italian bread. The 1920s saw a host of innovations that made it even easier for people to enjoy sandwiches. Probably the biggest single innovation was the sale of pre-slice bread. If you remember back to one of my very earliest episodes on this podcast on the subject, once pre-slice bread came on the market, people couldn't get enough of it. And it was perfect for quickly making sandwiches.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Around the same time, other products were also making it easy. to make sandwiches as well. Pre-packaged peanut butter and jelly began being sold, as did processed cold cuts. Between pre-slice bread and pre-packaged sandwich fillings, even a child could easily make a sandwich for themselves. In 1925, a Nebraska grocer named Ruben Kulikovsky reportedly came up with the idea of the corned beef and sourcrow sandwich to feed his buddies while he was playing poker. Today, that sandwich bears his name and is called a Ruben. After World's War II, the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich became widespread, primarily because of improvements in shipping and refrigeration, which made the ingredients of the sandwich available

Starting point is 00:10:52 year-round. Sandwiches have become a huge part of modern life. The Guardian newspaper in the UK estimated that the average British person will consume over 18,300 sandwiches in their lifetime. In the United States, every day, 300 million sandwiches of every sort are consumed. In 2023, the website Taste Atlas.com commissioned a survey of Americans to find out what their favorite sandwich was. In first place was the grilled cheese sandwich, and in second place was the BLT. Sandwiches are such an important part of the world of modern food that most people don't even think about them.

Starting point is 00:11:31 They're so ubiquitous and widespread that they've just become a part of the landscape. Yet sandwiches are part of a culinary tradition that date back thousands of years, and it was all popularized by an English earl who just didn't want to take the time to get up from playing cards. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Joe Face 530 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, A favorite for sure.

Starting point is 00:12:06 Where else can you learn such a variety of topics? From molasses to crassus and so much more. My wife has finally stopped asking, where'd you learn that? She knows it's from the Art Academy of Everything. Thank you for entertaining me and educating me as well. As I've just joined the Completionist Club, I'll miss listening during my travels through the Southeast. I may have to join the Carolinas Club for the dual completionist so I can use the private entrance. Keep up the good work.

Starting point is 00:12:31 Thanks, Joe Face. I have to confess, I think I'm going to steal the molasses to crassus line, because it's a pretty good one. All Completionist Club members are welcome to use all of the clubs worldwide. However, if you want, you can listen to all the episodes twice to achieve elite platinum status. Remember that if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show. I order the club sandwich all the time, and I'm not even a member, man. I don't know how I get away with it. I like my sandwiches with three pieces of bread.

Starting point is 00:13:03 So do I. Well, let's form a club then. Okay, but we need some more stipulations. Yes, we do. Instead of cutting the sandwich once, let's cut it again. Yes, four triangles. We will position them into a circle. And in the middle we will dump chips.

Starting point is 00:13:21 Or potato salad. Okay. Let me ask you a question. How do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm formed. Well, this club is formed. Spread the word on menus nationwide.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Sandwiches

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