Do you like sandwiches? I sub-pose I do. What is a sandwich? It’s simply bread with a topping ‘sandwiched’ in between. Sandwiches are a quick and tasty way to enjoy your meal. There are many different types of sandwiches: club, sloppy joe, BLT, ice cream, peanut butter and jelly. Everyone knows what a sandwich is, but do they know how it came to be? Who was the very first person to come up with the idea of combining meat and bread into one meal? Sandwiches have been around for centuries, beginning in ancient China or the 1700s in the United Kingdom.
The story of the origin of the word sandwich started with a rumour and a lazy man. John Montagu a.k.a the Earl of Sandwich. Montagu was born in 1718 in the United Kingdom where he was a member of an English parliament. He was the Earl of Sandwich, which is located east of London on the shores of the North Sea. The birth of the actual word came from a satirical book called Tour of London, which described the details of the scene at the gambling table where Montagu made his first sandwich. The story goes that Montagu gambled for 24 hours straight and he didn’t want to waste his precious time with eating, so he came up with a plan to combine all his meals into one easy meal. In a stroke of genius, he combined bread with meat. The first known use of the word ‘sandwich’ came when a historian named Edward Gibbon first wrote the word ‘sandwich’ in his diary. He said he first thought of the word when he saw a man eating “a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich.” He did not bring up Montagu at all. Some historians believe that the word ‘sandwich’ was not named after the Earl, and that it was in fact all a conspiracy created by a rumor. The creation of the name is unknown, but who doesn’t love a little mystery?
One of the earliest known sandwich creations was from Hillel the Elder. Hillel the Elder was a rabbi and scholar who lived in Jerusalem during the first century BC. The Haggadah, a Jewish text read over Passover Seder, describes how Hillel made his sandwiches. His creation involved Paschal lamb, herbs, and Matzoh bread. To this day, many people make it a tradition to make their own Matzoh sandwiches during Seder dinner.
The Rou jia mo is said to be the oldest sandwich in the world and dates back to 1046 BC during the Zhou dynasty. It is a street food that originates from the Shaanxi province in north-western China. Rou jia mo (肉夹馍) directly translates to “meat in a bun.” Many people refer to it as the Chinese hamburger or a Chinese sloppy joe. The filling is called La Zhi Rou (腊汁肉), meaning pork belly, and dates back to 2000 years ago. The bun is referred to as mo — some mo are steamed, while others are baked. This combination created the Rou Jia Mo sandwich.
After the invention of the word ‘sandwich,’ people began making new words for different sandwiches. For example, the ‘sloppy joe’ or the ‘turkey club’. After the invention of new words and new types of sandwiches, people in America began making sandwich restaurants. One famed American restaurant claims they hold the title of the creator of the po’boy. The first chain sandwich restaurant was a Blimpie, which was built in 1964 in Hoboken, New Jersey. The first known recipe for a peanut butter and jelly appeared in 1901 in a cookbook. The new love for the sandwich created a huge need for peanut butter, leading to companies in the 1920s beginning the mass production of peanut butter. The creation of the sandwich changed the world for the better.
The story of the sandwich may never be solved. We may never know who created the first sandwich or how the name truly came to be. All there is to do is to celebrate the future of sandwiches and, w use past ideas about sandwiches to create completely new concoctions.
