Why is a sandwich called a sandwich? It is named after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, but he isn’t the person who invented it.
There is no way to work out when sandwiches were invented because people presumably ate them once there was bread. A sandwich merely consists of a filling between two pieces of bread. It is very likely that people ate like this from thousands of years ago because it is a very natural thing to do.
Humans have eaten bread for at least 14,000 years. It was often thought that bread was invented more recently, but a 14,500-year-old piece of bread was found by an archaeologist doing research on a Natufian campsite. She found traces of petrified food and when they were analyzed, they turned out to be crumbs of bread. That turned people’s way of thinking on its head because the general assumption was that bread was invented after people started to farm, which happened about 10,000 years ago. If 14,5000-year-old bread has been found, that means ancient people were making bread with wild grains long before they learned how to farm the grain itself. Bread was pretty difficult to make, so it was probably reserved for special occasions. However, once agriculture took off, it would have been easier to make, and the popularity of bread spread. I think it is safe to assume that once people had bread, they would have eaten other things either on it or in it, which is basically a sandwich.
The first written record of something that resembles a sandwich is in the first century BC and was by a Jewish religious leader called Hillel the Elder. He had meat from a lamb with bitter herbs inside a flat unleavened bread. These sandwiches are still eaten on certain Jewish festivals today. There are other records throughout history of people eating “bread and meat” but there was no name for it. It is probable that there were records from before Hillel the Elder’s time, but we haven’t found them, or people just didn’t think it was worth writing about. Still, even though the food obviously existed, it had no name. This is not that unusual. There is no name for having maple syrup and fruit on a pancake. There is no name for dipping biscuits in a cup of tea. There is no name for eating apple pie with ice cream. Just because two things are eaten together doesn’t mean they always get named. Sandwiches did get a name though. Let’s look at why.
The sandwich was named after John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. He lived from 1718 to 1792 in the UK. He became the Earl of Sandwich at the age of ten when his grandfather died. He had a very full life. He was a statesman, a politician, a colonel in the army, ambassador to the Dutch Republic, secretary of state, postmaster general, and First Lord of the Admiralty. During all of this, he found the time to have several mistresses and to be a regular at the gambling tables in the various clubs he was a member of. This is where the most common story of the creation of the sandwich comes from. The Earl of Sandwich was gambling and he wanted something to eat while he was gambling, but he didn’t want to get fat on his fingers. He asked for some roast beef between two slices of bread. Other gamblers started to order “the same as Sandwich,” and it took off from there. The Earl’s official biographer said that when he ordered his first sandwich, the Earl was actually at work in the admiralty, but he would say that. The name slowly spread, although sandwiches didn’t really take off until the Industrial Revolution. When most people lived on the land, they ate a large lunch. When they moved into the cities and didn’t have as much time for lunch, they wanted something easy and cheap to eat, which was usually a sandwich.
The next logical question, of course, is why was he called the Earl of Sandwich in the first place? John Montagu was the 4th Earl of Sandwich. The first earl was Sir Edward Montagu and he was made the Earl of Sandwich in 1660. Sandwich is a small town in south-east England. It currently has a population of 4,985 people. An earl is the third highest rank in the British nobility. The first rank is obviously the king, queen, princes and princesses. Duke is the first rank after the royal family. Marquess comes after duke and earl comes after marquess. The Hawaiian islands were called the Sandwich Islands when they were first discovered by Britain because the 4th Earl of Sandwich was a huge sponsor of Captain James Cook. The name was changed back to Hawaii. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: https://www.pexels.com/photo/wheat-bread-sandwich-1209029/
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich
https://www.faktoider.nu/sandwich_eng.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Sandwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich,_Kent
https://www.britannica.com/topic/sandwich
https://www.britishsandwichweek.com/why-are-they-called-sandwiches
https://www.history.com/news/sandwich-inventor-john-montagu-earl-of-sandwich
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