Sandwich (pronounced sand-wich or san-wich)
(1) Two
or more slices of bread or the like with a layer of meat, fish, cheese etc
between each pair.
(2) A type of cake with noticeably distinct horizontal layers.
(3) To
insert something between two other things (used figuratively also of ideas, concepts, historic events etc).
(4) In engineering or construction, a technique of assembly in which materials (which need not be flat) are joined in two or more layers.
(5) To eat one or more sandwiches (archaic except in literary or poetic use).
1762: Named after John Montagu (1718-1792), fourth of Earl Sandwich, a bit of a cad and gambler who, during marathon sessions at the tables,
would eat slices of cold meat between bread rather than rise for a meal and thus "miss a bet". However, the earl’s biographer suggested his
subject was a serious chap, committed to the navy, politics and the arts and
the sandwiches were actually eaten at his desk at the Admiralty but the legend
is much preferred. It was in his honor Captain James
Cook (1728-1779) named the Hawaiian Sandwich islands in 1778 when Montagu was First Lord of
the Admiralty (then the UK's minister for the Royal Navy). The family name is from
the place in Kent which in the Old English was Sandwicæ
(sandy harbor; trading center). In structural linguistics, a "sandwich" word is one in which two or more syllables have been split (al la slices of bread) and filled with another word. Use of the technique is common and exemplified by an opinion such as: "Fox News is just Murdoch propafuckinganda". The term was coined by US lexicographer Dr Harold Wentworth (1904-1965). A "sandwichery" is a place where sandwiches are sold and the noun sandwichness (the state or quality of being a sandwich) seems only ever used as jocular term food reviews. Sandwich, sandwichness & sandwichery are nouns, verb & adjective, sandwiched is a verb and sandwichlike, sandwichy & sandwichless are adjectives; the noun plural is sandwiches (the always rare sandwichs probably now extinct).
There
are a least dozens and likely more than a hundred recorded descriptions of
sandwiches with names drawn variously from the fillings, type of bread, method
of preparation, (alleged) regional origin or occasion when served but the word has
also appeared in idiomatic use including: “nothing sandwich” (a sandwich with a
bland taste (used also figuratively as a synonym of “nothingburger” to suggest
something is of less significance than its appearance or treatment accorded
deserves)); “soup sandwich” (something or someone thought disorganized,
incompetent, fundamentally flawed or unfinished; “air sandwich” (a sandwich
consisting only of bread and a sauce or spread, but no filling (in figurative
use a strategy that has high-level
direction and low-level administrative support but in operation is close to
inert); “Elvis sandwich” (a sandwich made peanut butter, sliced or mashed
banana, and sometimes bacon on toasted bread, based on the fondness the singer Elvis
Presley (1935-1977) had for the concoction (a banana smeared with peanut butter
was reputedly a favourite snack of Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001)); “shit
sandwich” (something highly undesirable that is rendered more acceptable or
palatable by the addition of more tolerable or agreeable components); “tavern
sandwich” a sandwich consisting of unseasoned ground beef and sautéed onions in
a bun); “barley
sandwich” (a glass of beer (synonymous with “liquid lunch”); “lead sandwich” (a method of suicide in which a shotgun is placed in
the mouth and discharged (100% success
rate as might be expected)) and “prawn (shrimp) sandwich brigade” (those who attend
sporting event to socialize and enjoy the hospitality in corporate hospitality
boxes rather than having any interest in the event). In physics a “nanosandwich” is a nanoscale
structure consisting of a dielectric layer between two discs and in chemistry a
“sandwich compound” is any compound in which a metal atom is located between
the faces of two planes of atoms, especially between two rings.
Sandwich is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, its population 20,675 at the last census; the oldest town on Cape Cod, in 2014, Sandwich turned 375 years old. Sandwich has a police department: They are the Sandwich Police.
The Sandwich Police cruiser is a second generation (1998-2011) Ford Crown Victoria (1992-2011), built on the corporation's "Panther" platform (1978-2011). When Ford ceased production of the Crown Victoria, it was the last of the old-style (BoF (body-on-frame), V8, RWD (rear wheel drive), full-sized cars which were the backbone of the US industry for the first four post-war decades. Although by the 1990s judged archaic by the US motoring press (and some international journalists who drove them in 2009 expressed amazement such a thing was still made), the demise of the Crown Victoria was a matter of regret for US police departments and many other fleet operators (notably rental car companies) because the CV's combination of virtues (robust, reliable, spacious, low TCO (total cost of ownership)) made them ideally suited for "heavy duty use" and in fleets, even today, some remain faithfully in service. In truth, if driven within it's limitations, a CV (or the companion Mercury Grand Marquis) could be a satisfying experience for what it lacked in refinement it compensated for in other ways and for those who yearn still for the way things used to be done, the more desirable of the CVs (or the corporate stablemate Mercury Grand Marquis) can be a good choice.
More
sandwich police: A police officer at the Ingham Subway in Queensland, Australia
preparing a sub, an event held by Subway Australia on 2 November, 2018 to mark
World Sandwich Day.
On the day, 329,814
sandwiches were assembled for needy families.There is doubt whether the sandwich became
so-named as early as 1762 because the first documented account of the earl’s
culinary innovation was written in 1770 but it certainly caught on. The sandwich board, the two-sided mobile advertising
carried on the shoulders was first so-described in 1864 and someone employed to "wear" the device was sandwichman (a word now probably extinct although sandwich boards still occasionally are seen, carried presumably by sandwichpersons). The
Wall Street Journal once described the sandwich as "Britain's biggest contribution to gastronomy" but,
given the parlous reputation of the rest of their pre-modern cuisine, the WSJ may have
been damning with faint praise.
Regardless, while Lord Sandwich may have lent his name, the historical record
suggests sandwiches have been eaten since bread was first baked, pre-dating the
earl by thousands of years.
In 2022, with Lindsay Lohan on location in Ireland for the shooting of the Netflix film Irish Wish (2024), Westport Café The Creel created a sandwich to honor the famous visitor. The Lindsay LoHam included 'nduja sausage, Monterey Jack cheese, mixed grated cheddar, caramelized onions and, naturally enough given the name, ham. Irish Wish remains available to stream but the Lindsay LoHam enjoyed only a limited release.
By convention, when more than two slices of bread are used it becomes a "club sandwich" and it's now not uncommon for filled bread rolls, pita, flatbreads, etc also to be sold as sandwiches. When the filling is spread atop a single slice of bread, it can be called an "open sandwich" which (historically) is oxymoronic but in commerce the term is well-established; dating from the 1920s, these first appeared on menus as "open face sandwich" but the term was soon clipped. Over millennia, there must have been countless inventions and re-inventions of variants of the sandwich and the innovations have been linguistic as well as culinary, one noted concoction the muffuletta, a thick, round sandwich, typically containing ham, salami, and cheeses and topped with an olive salad, a specialty of New Orleans; it seems first to have been served in the late 1960s, the name from the Sicilian dialect, from the Italian muffoletta (a round hollow-centered loaf of bread), from muffola (mitten), from the French moufle. In New Orleans, among the muffuletta cognoscenti, there is a heated faction and a room-temperature faction. Another delicacy is the fried brain sandwich which, although now associated with things south of the Mason-Dixon line, was apparently first offered in St Louis, Missouri. Self-explanatory, it's made with thinly sliced fried slabs of calf’s brain on white toast; to some a genuine delicacy, to others it'd be an acquired taste. Etymologists
note that confusingly, in the US, some restaurants (said to be most often those “specializing
in barbecue”) use “sandwich” in its adjectival sense when serving a meal that is
smaller than either lunch or dinner yet not so modest to be thought “a snack”. These offerings do not imply that of
necessity what’s served will be in the form of “a sandwich” although some may
be, the point being what’s on the menu is “something smaller than what appears on
the lunch and dinner menus”.
Quintessential Grilled Cheese: The ultimate cheese toastie.
In
2017, Guinness World Records officially recognized the “Quintessential Grilled Cheese” on the menu at New York City’s Serendipity3 as the planet’s most expensive commercially available sandwich. Then listed at US$214, it was made with Dom
Perignon champagne-infused French Pullman bread, 23-karat edible gold,
a rare Italian cheese and grass-fed white truffle butter. Served on a Baccarat crystal plate with a
bowl of South African lobster tail tomato bisque, the restaurant required customers
to order 48-hour in advance. Obviously
not a typical cheese toastie, the core ingredient was Caciocavallo Podolico, an
extremely rare Italian cheese made from the milk of a mere 25,000-odd cows grazing
on fennel, licorice, and wild strawberries; accounting for some of the sandwich’s
high price, the beasts lactate only for a few weeks over May-June. The luxury toastie still appears on Serendipity 3's menu (along with the “World's most expensive fries” but interestingly, the restaurant have not advised any increase in the price, despite recent inflation and the spike in the gold price. Given it need to be ordered in advance, presumably it's now on a PoA (price on application) basis. Still, renowned also for its Frrrozen Hot
Chocolate (there’s a $25,000 “Haute” version of that which must be remarkable),
Serendipity 3 does sound the ideal place for a first date although it would raise expectations and one should choose the place only if one has the disposable
income for regular return visits.
Lindsay Lohan next to
pink ice cream truck, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2021.
In
2021,
RadarOnline (a pop culture aggregation handler published by RMG (
Radar
Media Group)) reported that while on-location in Salt Lake City, Utah for the
shooting of the Netflix movie
Falling for Christmas (2022), Lindsay Lohan bought ice cream sandwiches for the film
crew. Ice cream is in Utah a popular commodity because of what's laid down in the
Word of Wisdom, (a kind of etiquette guide cum rulebook) for members of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). The
Word of Wisdom is properly styled the
Doctrine and Covenants (the D&C (1835)) and is the Mormon scriptural canon, section 89 containing the dietary rules proscribing, inter-alia, the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and hot drinks (ie tea & coffee). Noted Mormon Mitt Romney (b 1947; Republican nominee in the 2012 US presidential election, US senator (Republican-Utah) 2019-2025) usually looks so miserable not only because of what has become of the Republican Party but because the D&C's index of the forbidden denies him the simple indulgence of a cup of coffee. The rules also explain why manufacturers of chocolate, candy & soda have long found the Mormons of Utah a receptive and lucrative market; other than the joyful singing of hymns, the sugary treats are among their few orally enjoyed pleasures. In Utah, as well as ice cream sandwiches, there's a ready market too for “dirty sodas”; Mormons aren’t allowed to do anything “dirty” (though it's rumored some do) and a dirty soda (a soda flavored with “spikes” of cream, milk, fruit purees or syrups
) is about as close to sinfulness as a reading of the D&C would seem to permit. Mormans sometimes team an ice cream sandwich with their dirty soda and for those who want more, ice cream cakes are also a big seller.
Replacing humans with mechanical devices has a long history: Automated dystrybutor piwa i kanapek (beer and sandwich dispenser), Kraków, Poland. It was installed in May 1931.
In the mid
1950s when English in the US was more regionalized than it would become, in New
York City a sandwich typically was sold as a “hero” while in other parts it
might be a grinder (based on the ground meat often used as the base of the
filling) or a submarine (based on the use of a long, tubular bread roll, the
use carried-over when other types of bread were used). The “poor boy” was a description from New
Orleans of uncertain origin but presumed related to the idea of a sandwich being
a “cheap meal” to take-away while richer folks sat in the diner and ate off a
plate. Most intriguing was the “hoagie”
which definitely emerged in the Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia though the history
is disputed. One explanation is the
original was a “big sandwich” in the form a filled split-roll (al la those
served by the modern Subway chain) and thus resembling in shape a large cigar,
the linguistic link claimed to be with “stogie”, a common slang term for a
cigar, the construct thought to be stoga + -ie, the first element derived from the
Conestoga Cigar Company which in the 1880s was one of the first Pennsylvanian
cigar factories. The connection sounds
plausible but is undocumented. The
professionals seem unconvinced by the alternative suggestions: (1) a folk-etymology
alteration of the Greek gyro (a back-formation from the plural gyros, from the
Ancient Greek γύρος (gýros) (from the turning of the meat on a spit) or (2) some
connection with the US popular musician Hoagland “Hoagy” Carmichael (1899-1981). The Greek link is undocumented and thought “vague”
and although as a songwriter Hoagy Carmichael enjoyed success as early as the
late 1920s, his fame as a performer wasn’t established until a decade later and
in Philadelphia the sandwiches were being sold as “hoggies” as early as 1935,
thus the conclusion his later celebrity status might have influenced a change
in the spelling, “Hoagies” on sale by 1945.
It is of course possible the original “hoggie” was derived from “hog” on
the basis of at least some of the sandwiches being “pork rolls” but of this
there’s no evidence. As a footnote,
although rarely seen without a cigarette, Mr Carmichael seems not to have been
a cigar smoker.
The
Lotus Elite (Type 14) was produced in two series (S1, 1957-1960; S2, 1960-1963)
and was a rolling catalogue of innovation and clever re-purposing of off-the-shelf parts. One of its most distinctive
features was borrowed from aviation: the stressed-skin fibreglass monocoque
construction which obviated entirely the need for a chassis or space-frame, the
body an integrated, load-bearing structure created using the “sandwich
technique”. The only substantial steel
components were a sub-frame supporting the engine and front suspension and a
hoop to which was attached the windscreen, door hinges and jacking points. The company’s philosophy was “simplify, then
add lightness” while lent the Elite some delightful characteristics but even
had all components been produced in accordance with the specification, many
parts of the structure were so close to the point of failure that some
revisions to the design would anyway have been necessary but the early cars
were far from perfect. The contact for
the fabrication of the bodies had been won by a boat-builder, then one of the
few companies with much experience in molding fibreglass.
Club sandwich: The Elite's triple-layer monocoque.
However, the Elite was a more complex design than a boat hull and
fibreglass was still a novel material, even Chevrolet in the United States,
with access to the financial and engineering resources of General Motors, found
early in the production of the Corvette there were lessons still to be
learned. Unlike many boats which used a
single or double-layer method, the Elite’s body consisted of three
stressed-fiberglass layers (thus in industry jargon a “club sandwich”) which,
when joined in a monocoque, created the bulkheads and eight torsion boxes gave
the structure its strength and stiffness although the success was something of
a surprise. The designer, working in the
pre-CAD (computed-aided design) era and with no experience of the behavior of fibreglass, had doubted
the material would be strong enough so had the first prototype built with some
steel and aluminum plates sandwiched between the layers with mounting brackets
bonded in points at the rear to support the suspension and differential
mountings. In subsequent tests, these
proved unnecessary but so poorly molded were many of the layers that structural
failures became common, the resin porings of inconsistent thickness creating
weaknesses at critical points, suspension struts and differentials known to
punch themselves loose from mountings or even tear away chunks of the
supposedly supporting fibreglass.
Le Mans 24 Hour, June
1959: Lotus Elite #41 leads Ferrari
250TR #14. The Ferrari (DNF) retired after overheating, the Elite finishing
eighth overall, winning the 1.5 litre GT class.
Needing an operation more
acquainted with the tight tolerances demanded in precision engineering, after finishing some Elites, Lotus
switched suppliers, the molding contract granted to the Bristol Aeroplane
Company. This transformed quality control and the remaining 750-odd Elites
carried an S2 designation, the early cars retrospectively (but unofficially)
dubbed S1. Even so, despite the
improved, lighter and stiffer shell, it would be another generation before the
structural implications of fibreglass would fully be understood and the flaws
inherent in the design remained, suspension attachment points sometimes still
prone to detachment, Lotus content to the extent it now happened only under
extreme loading rather than habitually. The
combination of light-weight, a surprisingly powerful engine and a degree of
aerodynamic efficiency which few for decades would match delivered a package
with a then unrivalled combination of performance and economy. On the road, point-to-point, it was able to
maintain high average speeds under most conditions and only in then unusual
places like the German Autobahns with their unlimited speeds could heavier,
more powerful machines assert their advantage.
On the circuits, it enjoyed an illustrious career, notable especially
for success in long-distance events at the Nürburgring and Le Mans. The frugal fuel consumption was an important
factor too, as well as claiming five class trophies in the Le Mans 24 hour
race, the Elite twice won the mysterious Indice
de performance (an index of thermal efficiency), a curious piece of
mathematics actually designed to ensure, regardless of other results, a French
car always would win a trophy for something.
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855).
Elizabeth Gaskell's (1810–1865) 1857 biography (a very Victorian work) long loomed over the memory of Charlotte Brontë because it portrayed the author of the deliciously depraved eponymous protagonist in Jane Eyre (1847) as the doomed, saint-like victim of the circumstances which crushed her and the consumption which stalked her. The old curmudgeon G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) reckoned that while a good biography told one much about the subject, a bad one revealed all one needed to know about the author. Gaskell’s crafted miserabilia of course created a legend of its own, a kind of death cult for those for whom victimhood isn’t quite enough so Charlotte Brontë has long been on the emo reading list (a very specific sub-set of the canon). However, whatever might have been the tone of reviews penned by those critics who found little to admire in works by women, even jaded types like literary editors were captivated by her words, George Smith (1865-1932) who worked for the publishing house Smith, Elder & Co at Cornhill noting in his diary: “After breakfast on Sunday morning I took the manuscript of Jane Eyre to my little study, and began to read it. The story took me captive. When the servant came to tell me that luncheon was ready I asked him to brim me a sandwich and a glass of wine, and still went on with Jane Eyre. Dinner came; for me the meal was a very hasty one; and before I went to bed that night I had finished reading the manuscript.” She deserved better than the gloomy impression left by Elizabeth Gaskell and history has been kind although even George Smith who admired her thought he discerned what she really wanted from life, writing in The Critic in 1901: "I believe she would have given all her genius and all her fame to be beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, and more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty." That was perhaps toxic masculinity as expressed by the literary middle class but Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) focused just on the work, writing in his Autobiography (1883): "I venture to predict that Jane Eyre will be read among English novels when many whose names are now better known shall be forgotten."
Of the fourth Earl of Sandwich who got a bit of fun out of life
Portrait of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1783) by Thomas Gainsborough (circa 1727-1788), National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
John Montagu was one of the more interesting
chaps to sit in the House of Lords. Rich
and well-connected, he was a libertine in the milieu of the aristocratic swagger of the eighteenth century, his country house described by a contemporary as
“the scene of our youthful debaucheries, the retreat of your hoary
licentiousness.” There’s never been any
suggestion Sandwich was in his self-indulgence any more depraved than many of his companions but certainly, he fitted-in.
In his lifetime, the earl’s fame came not from the
eponymous snack but his long affair with Miss Martha Ray (1746-1779), a most
becoming and talented young singer. It’s
never been known when first they made friends but she lived with him as his
mistress from the age of seventeen (he was then forty-five), the relationship
producing nine children. The concubinage of Miss Ray he enjoyed while his wife was suffering from mental illness and while it’s not recorded
if her condition was triggered by her husband’s ways, given he conducted
an affair also with his sister-in-law, there must be some suspicion.
Montagu's behavior attracted the interest of many,
including John Wilkes, a prominent satirist who wrote a number of pieces
critical of the earl’s politics and ridiculing his (not so) private life. Montagu’s revenge was swift. Wilkes didn’t write only publicly-published
satire, he also had a small circle of socially elite subscribers to his other
literary output. That was pornography,
and the earl was a subscriber. To
discredit Wilkes, Lord Sandwich rose in the House of Lords and read extracts
from Wilkes’ The Essay on Women which
he prefaced by telling their lordships “…it
was so full of filthy langue (sic) as
well as the most horrid blasphemies”.
The earl did not exaggerate and even today the words would shock and appall their lordships although, it must be admitted, it's always been a place where members easily are appalled (or at least affect to be). The vengeance backfired, the Lords ruling his speech a breach of
procedure which sounds a mild rebuke but in that place was a damning censure. It also provoked Wilkes who responded with
tales of Sandwich’s “debauchery, miserliness and lack of good faith” and a biography
published in the 1760s labelled him “an arsonist and thief”. His reputation never recovered although, when masticating a sandwich, we all still should remember him and be glad.
Portrait of Martha Ray (in pussy bow) by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735–1811). Miss Ray’s end was sadder still. Lord Sandwich granted her a generous allowance and obtained
a flat in Westminster so she had somewhere to live during those times when, for
whatever reason, she couldn’t stay in his house. He also introduced her to a young soldier,
James Hackman (circa 1752-1779) who became obsessed with her and soon turned into what would now
be called a stalker. In 1779, Hackman resigned
his commission to join the church and it seems he and Ms Ray may have had a brief
liaison but she declined his offers of marriage, apparently because she thought
his social status and financial means inadequate to keep he in the style to which she'd become accustomed. Not handling rejection well, Hackman remained infatuated,
became obsessively jealous and renewed the pursuit. One evening in April 1779, after following her to the
Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, he shot her dead, apparently under the
impression she had taken another lover, which may or may not have been
true. Immediately after the murder, Hackman
attempted suicide but succeeded only in wounding himself and was arrested. Two days after she was buried, the Reverend Hackman was
sentenced to be hanged and within the week he died on the Tyburn gallows in a public
execution before “a large crowd”.
