The earl who would not leave the table
The SANDWICH is named after John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. A French visitor to London in 1765 later wrote that a government minister had spent twenty-four hours at a gambling table, eating nothing but beef between slices of toasted BREAD so he never had to stop. The minister was soon identified as the earl, and people began asking for the same as Sandwich. His biographer thinks it more likely he ate them at his desk, since he was known for working long hours. Either way, the earl's title came from the town of Sandwich in Kent, whose name meant sandy harbour in Old English.
People had eaten food on or between bread for thousands of years before him, of course. The earl only gave it a name.
Cucumber and no crusts
In the 1840s, Anna, Duchess of Bedford, found the long gap between lunch and a late dinner hard to bear, and began taking tea with bread, BUTTER and cake in the late afternoon. Her friends joined her, and afternoon tea became a fashion. Its most famous sandwich is thin slices of CUCUMBER in buttered white bread with the CRUST cut off, a sign that the host could afford to waste bread and had a cook to do the cutting. Cucumber sandwiches are still served at royal garden parties.
A sandwich in space
In 1965, the astronaut John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich on board the Gemini 3 spacecraft in his pocket and offered it to his crewmate in orbit. Crumbs began floating around the cabin, where they could have drifted into the equipment, and the sandwich was quickly put away. Back on Earth, members of Congress were not amused, and the space agency promised it would not happen again. Astronauts now make their sandwiches with a tortilla WRAP, which does not crumble. Our astronauts page covers the people who fly.
Subs, clubs and triangles
The long SUB goes by a different name in almost every American city: hoagie in Philadelphia, hero in New York, grinder in parts of New England. The name submarine is often traced to a sandwich shop near a navy submarine base in Connecticut. The CLUB sandwich, stacked in three layers of TOASTED bread with CHICKEN or TURKEY, BACON, LETTUCE and TOMATO, is often said to come from a gentlemen's gambling club in Saratoga Springs, New York, in the 1890s. In Britain, the ready-made sandwich sealed in a triangular pack was first sold by Marks & Spencer in 1980, and Britons now buy billions a year. A PANINI is a pressed Italian sandwich; in Italian, panini is already plural, so one is a panino.
A loaf protected by law
In France, the BAGUETTE is taken seriously enough that a 1993 law says a baguette de tradition may contain only flour, water, salt and yeast, and in 2022 the craft of baking it joined the United Nations list of the world's cultural heritage. The French jambon-beurre, a baguette with HAM and butter, is one of the country's best-selling sandwiches. MAYO, or mayonnaise, may be named after the town of Mahón on the island of Menorca, though nobody is sure. A PICKLE, MUSTARD, CHEESE or any other FILLING can go between the slices.