Sandwich

A Sandwich consists of a variety of fillings placed between two slices of bread. Frequently eaten as a quick snack food, sandwiches are particularly popular at lunch time. Almost 11 billion sandwiches are consumed every year in the United Kingdom alone. British commercially produced sandwiches form an industry worth £4.6 billion and employing over 320,000 people. These impressive statistics are still somewhat dwarfed by the American sandwich consumption that accounts for 45 billion sandwiches every year.

Varieties of sandwich

• Baguettes or Subs - Uses french style Baguettes. The long loaf is cut length-ways allowing for a large quantity of filling to be held between the two pieces of bread. This style of sandwich has be recently popularised by the fast food chain Subway who specialise in this format.
• Open ended - A single slice of bread, or a single thing flat bread, is used. The filling is simply placed on top with no upper slice. This style is best suited to sticky fillings such as jam or melted cheese that will not fall off when lifted to the mouth.
• Folded - As with the open ended sandwich, this format uses only one slice of bread. This is then folded over on itself, without being cut, so that both top and bottom of the sandwich are joined along one edge.
• Double deckers - Using three or more slices of bread, space is created for two or more layers of filling. The Big Mac Hamburger sandwich is a popular example of a double decker. These sandwiches may become difficult to hold or even fit into one's mouth if the number of decks is too large or the width of the slices and fillings is too thick.
• Hamburger - A popular sandwich made using a round bread roll split horizontally. The filling is usually a cooked beef Pâté though other meats such as pork or chicken can be used (though strictly speaking, the non beef Pâtés are not true hamburgers, they are often named as such on menus.) The filling is frequently augmented with salad, ketchup, mustard, brown sauce, mayonnaise and/or onions.
• Hot dog - A soft bread roll with an elongated shape similar to a sub split vertically, though not all the way through. The main filling is a long hot dog sausage that may be either boiled or fried. A large variety of accompaniments may be placed on top, most common of which are ketchup and mustard.
• Triangular - The sandwich is constructed using two regular shaped slices of bread. Once formed, the sandwich is sliced in half or quarters along it's diagonals to produce a triangular shaped sandwich. These are also frequently cut again to make crust-less triangles. This style allows for a large variety of serving presentations. The hypotenuse of the triangle makes a prominent display of the fillings which makes this format popular with commercial produces.
• Toasted - Once built, the complete sandwich is placed under a grill, or inside a sandwich press, warming the bread and fillings and making the outside crunchy. Variations on the theme involve toasting the bread under the grill on one side only, then building an open ended sandwich and grilling the filling in a second firing. A plain toasted top slice may be added or the single slice folded if required to stabilise the filling.
• Crust-less - After building the sandwich, the outer crust is sliced off. Especially popular with children who sometimes reject the crusts of bread, this style is also popular with restaurants and canope produces as the trimming of the crust allows many sandwiches to be cropped to a consistent size and shape and so improving the presentation of the finished sandwich.

Fillings

The most popular commercial produced sandwich fillings in the UK are:

1. Chicken Salad
2. Egg and Cress
3. Chicken and bacon
4. BLT - Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato (also contains eggs)
5. Mixes selection
6. Cheese & Onion
7. Prawn Mayonnaise
8. Ploughmans - Cheddar cheese, pickle and salad.
9. Tuna & Sweetcorn
10. Chicken
11. Chicken Caesar
12. Chicken & Stuffing - Stuffing is pork sausage meat bulked out with rusk and flavoured with liberal quantities of sage and other herbs.
13. Salmon & Cucumber
14. Cheese & Ham
15. Cheese, Ham & Pickle
16. Egg & Bacon
17. Tuna & Cucumber
18. Hoisin Duck
19. Ham & Mustard
20. Cheese & Tomato

Home made sandwiches make up the majority of sandwich consumption. These tend to favour sweet fillings such as jam, peanut butter and chocolate spread in contrast to the savory fillings marketed commercially. Home made sandwiches frequently make use of left overs or whatever is available in the fridge. This has lead to some worry over food safety as such fillings may be close to their use-by dates and, if left sitting in a un-chilled lunch box for much of the day, are prone to going off.

History

The well know creation myth of sandwiches credits them to John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. So the story goes, he was an avid gambler. While playing poker, he instructed a servant to bring him a thick slice of beef between two slices of bread. The authenticity of this story is doubted as the 4th Earl had long running digestive problems and could only eat liquid foods. However, the first mention of a sandwich in literature was by Edward Gibbons, author and historian, in his journal on November 24 1762. In this he mentions seeing some wealthy gentle men eating sandwiches in a coffee shop.

Also in the year 1762, the London's Beef Steak Club, which met regularly at the Shakespeare Tavern, claim to have created the sandwich. The Beef Steak Club was a very exclusive club for the gentry of the time. The membership was initial limited to just 24, rising to 25 to accommodate the Prince of Wales. The 4th Earl of Sandwich was also a member of this club.

However, the above stories only serve to connect the name with the food. The actual item that we how call a sandwich seems to be significantly older than it's name. In fact, probably as old as sliced bread.

The first account of a sandwich like meal is from 1st century BC. The Rabbi Hillel, an Elder in Palestine, made a sandwich like meal using two matzohs breads, some nuts, apple, spices and herbs. The combination had an element of religious significance as the meal served as a reminder of the suffering of the Jews when enslaved in Egypt.

Throughout early English literature there is mention of pieces of bread and cheese or bread and meat as the format of a common meal. In the 'Old Wives Tale' by George Peel we have the line, "I took a piece of bread and cheese and came upon my way." The use of the term 'a piece' or 'pieces of' is still found in common use in some local dialects of English. A modern example of pieces can be found in the Glasgow folk song, "The Jeelie Piece Song (Skyscraper Wean)" in which a child laments at the passing of the custom for his mother to through his pieces to him for lunch out their tenement window. The post war construction of high rise flats (apartment buildings) made this practice impractical.

Oh ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty story flat,

Seven hundred hungry weans will testify to that.
If it's butter, cheese or jeely, if the breid is plain or pan,
The odds against it reaching earth are ninety-nine tae wan.

Author Adam McNaughton, 1967.

During the middle ages, another variation on the sandwich theme was the trencher. These trenchers were large flat, frequently stale, pieces of bread that were used as a substitute for plates. Food was placed on top of the trencher. The juices or sauce form the food would soften the trencher making it more edible.

The introduction of the sandwich to America is credited to Miss Eliza Leslie. Born in philadelphia in 1787, she grew up in England, where she would have encountered Sandwiches. In 1837, her book, Miss Leslie Directions for Cookery, was published. This book contained instructions of making a ham sandwich. By the 1860's, ham sandwiches had become popular through the USA; however, it was not until Mrs D A Lincon published her book, the Boston Cooking School Cook Book in 1896, that alternative fillings became popular within the states.

In the early 20th century, several technological advances were to have influence on sandwiches. The introduction of the Toastmaster, the first modern bread toaster, in 1926 made toasted sandwiches more popular. The introduction of pre-sliced bread to American shops by the manufacturer Wonder Bread in 1930, shows the effect that sandwich demand was having on the bread industry. By 1933, pre-sliced bread made up 80% of the American bread market.

In 1974, an Australian electronics company, Breville, introduced a new style of sandwich toaster. This toaster opened like a book and when closed, squeezed the pieces of bread gently together. This allowed toasted sandwiches to be made with hot fillings more easily than before. In the first year of production alone, Breville sold over 400,000 of it's toasters. They proved to be particularly popular in Britain. Variations of these sandwich presses are now made by several well known electronics companies and are commonly used in both homes and commercial sandwich outlets.