Sandwich: Know all about its origin & innumerable varieties

By Preeti Verma Lal

An afternoon in October. Lunch time. I am hungry. There’s a lavish spread on the mahogany table. But I am not eyeing anything. For, I yearn for a scrumptious sandwich quivering with melted cheese and a dollop of greens. Suddenly, a dapper Earl pops in my head. A tall Earl in silk breeches, curly mop, powdered nose hunched over a pack of cards playing cribbage with his boisterous friends. And when his tummy growls with hunger, he orders his valet to get beef between two slices of bread. The Earl loathes being pulled away from cribbage — he abhors greasy cards and a fork in hand. The valet slaps beef between bread for John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. So outlandish was this bread/beef lunch idea that everyone started ordering “just like sandwich”. And lo! the world’s fave lunch was born. Now, you know why the Earl was popping in my head. Naah! Not because I was craving for a sandwich. October calls for an Earlrewind. It is the International Sandwich Month.

Hold on, before the Earl runs away with all the credit for creating the now-staple lunch. History will drag you back to 110 BC and to a rabbi called Hillel who stashed herbs, apple slices and nuts between two matzos. History stays silent about what Hillel called his concoction but his stuffed matzos were the earliest version of what we now call sandwich. In the Middle Ages, Europeans were eating trenchers — stale, coarse bread was used as a plate. Trenchers cannot pass off as sandwich precursors because the rich diners fed the food-soaked bread to dogs or beggars. What probably had a farresemblance to modern sandwich is the way the Dutch ate thin slivers of sliced meat over bread which lay on butter. The English, however, were not eating open sandwiches. Not in the 17th century. When the Brits did start stashing meat between bread, it only had rogues and gamblers as takers. The scoundrels hated food interruption and greasy fingers. That’s why they loved sandwiches.

Grand Entry


On November 24, 1762, ‘sandwich’ first appeared in Edward Gibbons Journal where he rambles about “I dined at the Cocoa Tree…. upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich”. Gradually, the easy-to-make food slid onto the late-night dinner meal of the aristocrats and later as American supper. The simple humble modern sandwich that was born out of a man’s whim is now a worldwide $27 billion industry. The UK sandwich market is worth £3 billion — that’s 1.8 billion sandwiches annually running off counters in subways or cafes.

You can never count how many sandwiches are downed with beer and pop every day. Forgive me for dragging you into semantics, but can you really define a real sandwich? Not everything stuffed with meat, rice, beans or other ingredients is technically a sandwich. Calling burritos, tacos or quesadillas sandwiches is pure blasphemy. No, I am not promulgating these sandwich rules. Hear it from a court in Boston. The court ruled that a ‘sandwich’ should include at least two slices of bread.

Sticking to semantics, sandwiches are also star-struck, adding fancy prefixes to their prosaic name. Like, Hugh Hefner sandwich. The one served at Heimerhaus in Hollywood. What do you think it would boast of most? Well, a lot of breast: turkey and ham with chutney and Jack cheese.

The Woody Allen at New York’s Carnegie Deli is a towering mess of corned beef and pastrami; Mark Zuckerberg at Mr Bartley’s in Harvard comes with Boursin cheese, bacon and a side of sweet potato fries. Alfred Hitchcock at an old school Huntington Beach lunch spot is ham and provolone, smeared with mustard and served on a French roll. Al Gore at Two Bears Deli in Michigan is healthy, hearty and oh so eco! — tomato wheat wrap crammed with mixed greens, feta cheese, dried cherries and walnuts.

Too Many to Count

Even if the sandwich sheds the glitter of famous names, it is still not as simple as picking up a few ingredients and stuffing between two slices of bread. It can be elaborate, artsy or a feast in itself. You have heard of the common BLTs, PB&Js and the BBQs. That’s bacon, lettuce, tomato; peanut butter and jam; and barbecue chicken or pork. However, if you ever try to count all sandwiches on all the menus, you sure shall go breathless. The US-based Foodservice Research Institute has diligently collected sandwich stats. Like a sandwich census. In hot sandwich category, there are 10,089 varieties to pick from; there are 2,922 types of cold sandwiches (Indian sandwiches are only 0.2% of total cold sandwich menu share). The most popular cold sandwich is the tuna salad sandwich, accounting for 8.8% share of cold sandwiches on the menu. The grilled cheese sandwich is the leading hot sandwich and hogs 3.6% share in that category listed on the American menu.

The sandwich types range from cheese melt to pastrami, fried fish, calzone, meatball, beef taco, Philly cheesesteak and corned beef reuben. Then, there’s Dagwood sandwich which was created by Dagwood Bumstead of the comic strip Blondie by Murat Bernard ‘Chic’ Young. Dagwood is a sandwich made with many layers of bread, meats, cheese, lettuce, tomato, condiments, etc. And, of course, the Muffuletta, a submarine type sandwich that originated in New Orleans around 1910. It is made with a round loaf of Italian bread, split and layered with sliced Provolone cheese, salami and ham, topped with ‘olive salad’ — chopped green olives, pinientos, celery, garlic, capers, oregano, parsley, olive oil and red wine vinegar. Add to the list the Po’Boy (short for Poor Boy) and Sloppy Joe (created in Iowa as a “loose meat sandwich” by a chef called Joe). Muffuletta seems exotic. If you want anything more unusual, turn to chef Martin Rozario of Quote Bar and Lounge, New Delhi. He puts falafel in an open sandwich while chef Amit Dash of Courtyard by Marriott, Gurgaon, rustles up an unusual seafood salad Panini wherein he mayo-mixes calamari, prawns cooked with celery, leek with pesto and spreads them over Panini bread. In The Park Calangute, Goa, sous chef Kapil Muchandi happily makes a Moongachi gathi and copra sandwich that has sprouted beans, onion, tomato, ginger and garlic. Even curry leaves! All this cooked and spread over brown bread that is slathered with mayo. Over the years — from Hillel to Montagu to now — the sandwich has stepped beyond being merely an easy lunch or supper. It has spawned an entire world around itself. Nations have sandwich associations, sandwich magazines, sandwich designers, innovators, and even a much-coveted annual International Sammies Award (lovingly called The Sammies). Quite like the London Fashion Week, The Sammies showcase new trends in sandwich design and what’s going to be on the high streets next year. Plain Jane and Frumpy Joe sandwiches do not make it to the The Sammies. It is allglam and innovation. Sandwiches have to scrape through regional heats for a ticket to the finals. In The Sammies you can actually imagine a pretty sandwich walking up to the podium and receiving a designer or innovator award. In 2013, Sandwich Designer of the Year winner was Catherine Lear. Her Platinum winning sandwich was a prosciutto and asparagus melt in grilled sourdough bread, oozing melted mozzarella and crisp asparagus spears.

The ‘In’ Sandwich

Like fashion, the sandwich also hops through trends. Will avocado be the new ham this season? Will duotone sandwiches still be on the platter or will they be forgotten? Will pricey artsy sandwiches with condiments as paint daubs survive economic meltdowns? Will Rubik Cubewich (that resembles Ru sided bread art sandwich) find takers? So many different kinds. Just one life to eat. Sigh! I know of typography sandwiches (bread shaped like an alphabet) but I could never put sandwich and geometry on the same plate. Never thought of a sandwich theorem or an inane geometrical mash of a sandwich. But there’s one — Ham Sandwich Theorem. This is what it is: given globs of ham, bread, and cheese (in any shape), placed any way you like, there exists one flat slice of a knife (a plane) that will bisect each of the ham, bread and cheese. Put simply, you can share a sandwich with a friend so that both get exactly the same amounts of all three globs.

Forget the globs. Or their symmetrical, proportional cut. In the International Sandwich Month, I need no theorems to kill a sandwich hunger pang. Two slices of bread. Melted cheese. Micro-greens. Tomato. Lettuce. Onion. There, my sandwich is ready. My hunger is conquered. I am sandwich satiated!

The author is a freelance writer and photographer