Nobody invented the sandwich. People had been eating food between slices of bread, or piled on top of it, for centuries. What John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, gave it was a name: by the 1760s, fashionable London was calling cold meat in bread a "sandwich" after him. The famous story says he refused to leave a gambling table for 24 hours and called for beef between toast so he could eat without stopping. It comes from a French visitor's account of London gossip. The Earl's modern biographer thinks he was far more likely to have been eating at his desk.
Bread and something, since forever
Filling and bread together make one of the oldest meals there is. In medieval Europe, a trencher of stale bread served as a plate and soaked up the juices, and afterwards it was often given to the poor or to the dogs. Farm workers all over Europe took bread and cheese, or bread and a piece of meat, out into the fields. Jewish tradition credits the sage Hillel, in the first century BCE, with the custom of eating the Passover lamb and bitter herbs together with matzah. Flatbreads have been wrapped around fillings across the Middle East and Asia for as long as there have been flatbreads.
What English lacked was a single word for it. People spoke of "bread and meat" or "bread and cheese". This is where the Earl comes in.
The Earl and the card table
John Montagu (1718–1792) was a busy and controversial man. He was a leading politician, a patron of music and exploration, and three times First Lord of the Admiralty, the minister in charge of the Royal Navy. He also had plenty of enemies and a reputation, deserved or not, for high living.
The sandwich story comes from Pierre-Jean Grosley, a French writer who visited London in 1765 and published an account of the city a few years later. He describes a minister of state who spent 24 hours at a public gaming table and was so absorbed that he ate nothing but a piece of beef between two slices of toasted bread, without leaving the game. The dish, Grosley says, became fashionable and was called by the minister's name. He does not say who the minister was, but the name of the dish leaves little doubt.
There is an even earlier trace. In 1762 the young historian Edward Gibbon wrote in his journal about an evening at a London club. He saw some of the most prominent men in the kingdom supping at little tables on a bit of cold meat or "a Sandwich". This is usually cited as the earliest known written use of the word for food, and it shows that the name was already in use.
Gambler, or workaholic?
Grosley was repeating gossip, and there was plenty of gossip about Sandwich. The historian N. A. M. Rodger, who wrote a full biography of the Earl, points out that Sandwich was an unusually hard-working administrator. He suggests that if the Earl ate beef between bread without stopping, he was more likely at his desk, buried in naval paperwork, than at the card table. There is no way to be sure now. The gambling version survives because it makes a better story.
His name travelled further than any snack. When Captain James Cook reached Hawaii in 1778, he called the islands the Sandwich Islands in honour of the Earl, who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had backed his voyages. That name has long since given way to Hawaii, but the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic still carry it.
From the club to the lunchbox
At first the sandwich was a gentleman's late-night snack. Within a few generations it belonged to everyone. Victorian afternoon tea made dainty sandwiches a ritual: cucumber, cress, thinly sliced ham, crusts off. Workers and schoolchildren carried sturdier ones, wrapped in paper, for lunch.
Two twentieth-century changes turned the sandwich into the default midday meal. In 1928 a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, began selling bread cut by Otto Rohwedder's new slicing machine, and sliced loaves soon spread. In Britain, Marks & Spencer is widely credited with launching the modern pre-packed sandwich in 1980, and the chilled sandwich shelf has been a fixture of the high street ever since.
Meanwhile, sandwich traditions kept growing around the world. The Vietnamese bánh mì grew out of the French baguette in colonial Vietnam, filled with pâté, pickles, chilli and herbs. The club sandwich appeared in the United States in the late nineteenth century, and several places claim to have invented it. Almost every culture with bread seems to arrive at the sandwich sooner or later. The English just gave it a name.
How to build a better sandwich
A great sandwich is a small piece of engineering: bread, a barrier, the filling and some contrast. Get those right and even simple ingredients taste wonderful.
- Choose bread for the job. Use soft white bread for egg and cress or cucumber, sturdy sourdough or a crusty roll for wet or heavy fillings, and toast for anything warm or stacked high.
- Butter to the edges. A thin layer of soft butter or mayonnaise spread right to the crust keeps moisture out, so the bread does not go soggy.
- Keep wet things in the middle. Pat tomatoes and cucumber dry and dry your salad leaves well. Put wet layers between dry ones, never directly against the bread.
- Season the filling, not just the bread. A pinch of salt and pepper on sliced tomato or egg makes more difference than any fancy ingredient.
- Build in contrast. Put something rich, something sharp and something crisp together: mayonnaise and mustard, pickles or pickled onions, cress, crunchy lettuce.
- Treat eggs gently. For egg mayonnaise, cook the eggs until just hard, about 9–10 minutes once the water is boiling, then cool them in cold water to avoid a grey ring round the yolk. Mash them with a fork, not a blender, so the texture stays interesting.
- Toast low and slow. For a toastie, butter the outside, use a medium-low heat and give the cheese time to melt before the bread burns. A lid helps.
- Press, then cut. Press the finished sandwich gently with your palm for a few seconds, then cut it with a sharp serrated knife, corner to corner if you like tradition.
The Vegetarian Kitchen has a good run of sandwiches: the British classic Egg Mayonnaise & Cress Sandwich, a towering Veggie Club Sandwich with Egg & Avocado, a Grilled Cheese Toastie with Caramelised Onion, and a Tofu Bánh Mì with Pickled Carrot for when you want heat and crunch. There are more in the recipe finder's sandwich search, or you can browse all twelve cookbooks.
Questions people ask
Did the Earl of Sandwich really invent the sandwich?
No. People ate food with bread long before him. The Earl gave the sandwich its name in the 1760s, and the story of him eating one at a gambling table comes from London gossip recorded by a French visitor.
When was the word "sandwich" first used for food?
The earliest known written use is usually traced to Edward Gibbon's journal in 1762, in which he describes men at a London club supping on cold meat or a sandwich.
What was in the Earl of Sandwich's sandwich?
According to the French writer Pierre-Jean Grosley, a piece of beef between two slices of toasted bread. Grosley gives no more detail than that.
Why were the Hawaiian Islands once called the Sandwich Islands?
Captain James Cook named them in 1778 after the Earl of Sandwich, who was First Lord of the Admiralty and a supporter of Cook's voyages.