Above: John Monatgu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, holding the creation of his namesake.
The sandwich, as you’ll probably agree if you’re reading this blog, is a pretty amazing creation. A creation that dates all the way back to the 1st Century B.C. when Hillel the Elder started the Passover tradition of sandwiching chopped nuts, apples, spices, and wine between two matzohs to eat with bitter herbs.
During the Middle Ages, blocks of coarse stale bread called trenchers were used in place of plates and were piled high with meats and then eaten with the fingers. The gravy-soaked trenchers were usually tossed to the dogs or given to the poor after the filling was consumed. This sounds like the original open-faced sandwich to me.
Sandwiches may have been around for a long time but it wasn’t until 1762 when John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, gave this magical food a name. Montagu was a hardcore gambler and usually gambled for hours at a time, sometimes refusing to get up even for meals. It is said that he ordered his valet to bring him salted beef tucked between two pieces of toasted bread. Because Montagu also happened to be the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, others began to order “the same as Sandwich!”
So there you have it, a brief history of the sandwich. Now I would like to take a moment of silence to honor John Montagu and his gambling addiction. He may not have invented the sandwich, but it’s because of him that we call it by such to this very day. Think about that for a minute. It could have been the Fourth Earl of Warwick. Or Essex. Or Chatham.
“Hey guys, want to go grab a warwick?”
“I’m making PB&J chathams, who wants?”
Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Nope, it had to be Sandwich.
