A brief history on the origins of the humble sandwich.

Hillel the Elder, who lived in Babylon about 2,000 years ago, wrapped a few slices of lamb meat in some unleavened (flat) bread. That was the first wrap. You know this expression? "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being only for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when? That was Hillel. The power of a wrap. There’s a lot of psychology and philosophy to unpack there but that’s another day.

Something about wraps and sandwiches however, has been happening from Morocco through Western Asia and India since then. Elsewhere, and much later, in Europe, thick, round slabs of stale bread, called "trenchers," were used as plates upon which the food could be placed to eat.  At the end of the meal, the trencher could be eaten with sauce, but was more frequently given to the poor or fed to a dog or to beggars at the tables of the wealthy.  

The modern prototype sandwich was eaten in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, where in the taverns, beef hung from the rafters “which they cut into thin slices and eat with bread and butter laying the slices upon the butter".

Initially seen as food that men shared while gaming and drinking during the night, the sandwich slowly made its way into aristocratic society and finally arrived, as we know it today, in England in 1762. John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, during a long binge night of playing cards, ordered his valet to bring him meat sandwiched between two pieces of bread. Lord Sandwich liked this food format because he could continue playing cards whilst eating and without needing to use any utensils or without getting his cards greasy from eating meat with his hands. A bit like a hot dog bun which is merely a single handed delivery mechanism for eating BBQ’d sausages drowned in tomato sauce, mustard and fried onions. 

Since those days, the sandwich has permeated every market, social strata and format from the chip sandwich to the strawberry and cream sandwich to the cucumber sandwich, even up to such delicacies as the toasted cheese sandwich, the glorious sausage sandwich, the lazy students favourite, the fish finger sandwich, the peanut butter sandwich, the BLT, the Clubhouse for hotel lobby lounges and on and on it goes. Hemingway was a fan of the sliced raw onion and peanut butter sandwich, probably washed down with a whisky. He called it the highest point in the sandwich-maker’s art. It’s no mystery then why all his women left him. He called it the Mount Everest Special. For Commanders Only. He must have always been looking for onions.

Image: Lox in a Box, Bondi.