The sandwich is a British invention, or at least a British naming, and it is now the country’s default lunch. Over four billion are bought in the UK each year, and the pre-packed sandwich in a wedge-shaped carton is a genuine British retail innovation.
The Earl
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, is credited with the name. The story, recorded by a French traveller in 1762, is that Montagu asked for cold beef between two slices of bread so he could carry on at the gaming table without greasing the cards, and that others began ordering “the same as Sandwich”.
A kinder version, favoured by his descendants, holds that he was a hard-working First Lord of the Admiralty who ate at his desk. Both may be true.
The title comes from Sandwich in Kent, one of the Cinque Ports, so the food is ultimately named after a town. Captain Cook named the Sandwich Islands — now Hawaii — after the same earl, who was his patron.
The pre-packed revolution
Marks and Spencer began selling chilled pre-packed sandwiches in 1980, and it changed British lunch permanently. The wedge carton, the chilled cabinet and the meal deal are now universal, and the format was exported worldwide.
The meal deal — a sandwich, a snack and a drink for a fixed price — is a British institution in its own right, and the relative merits of the supermarket chains’ offerings are debated with real feeling.
The classics
- Cheese and pickle — cheddar with Branston, a sweet, dark, chunky pickle. The definitive British sandwich.
- Cheese and onion, and cheese and tomato.
- Ham and mustard.
- Egg mayonnaise — divisive on the train for reasons of smell.
- Tuna and sweetcorn — a peculiarly British combination that puzzles visitors.
- Coronation chicken — chicken in a mild curried mayonnaise with sultanas, invented for the 1953 coronation.
- The BLT, and the club sandwich.
- Chip butty and crisp sandwich — carbohydrate on carbohydrate, and entirely serious.
The regional words
What you call it locates you immediately:
- Sarnie — general, informal.
- Butty — the North and the Midlands, particularly with a hot filling. Chip butty, bacon butty.
- Sanger — chiefly Australian but heard here.
- And the bread itself varies enormously — a roll is a bap, barm, cob, batch, bun, muffin, teacake or stottie depending on the town, and people defend their own term energetically.
The afternoon tea version
At the other end entirely: the afternoon tea finger sandwich — crustless, thin, cut into rectangles, and filled with cucumber, smoked salmon, egg and cress or coronation chicken. Same food, different universe.