49 Fun Facts About Sandwiches

In the famous 1770s anecdote, Lord Sandwich ate beef between slices of toast rather than leave what?

The gambling table is where a French visitor's 1770 book put him, playing for 24 hours on nothing but beef between toast. His biographer thinks it likelier he simply ate at his desk while working.

Which McDonald's sandwich won its menu spot in 1962 by outselling Ray Kroc's meatless pineapple 'Hula Burger'?

Filet-O-Fish was a Cincinnati franchisee's fix for Catholic customers who skipped burgers on Fridays. In Kroc's one-day sales test it sold 350 and won hands down.

Honoring the 4th Earl of Sandwich, Captain James Cook named which islands the 'Sandwich Islands' in 1778?

Hawaii got the name because the earl headed the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty, the office that sent Cook's ships into the Pacific.

The sage Hillel the Elder is said to have wrapped Paschal lamb and bitter herbs in what?

Soft matzah made Hillel's wrap, and the Passover Seder still re-enacts it: in the korech step, diners eat bitter herbs between pieces of matzah in memory of his custom.

In 2024 an Indiana judge ruled that which foods are 'Mexican-style sandwiches'?

Tacos and burritos counted because the plaza was limited to made-to-order sandwich shops, so the ruling cleared a Famous Taco restaurant to open.

Paddington Bear keeps which kind of sandwich under his hat in case of emergencies?

Marmalade sandwiches went royal in 2022: in a Platinum Jubilee sketch, the Queen showed Paddington the one she kept in her handbag for emergencies.

A classic club sandwich stacks turkey, lettuce and tomato with which other meat?

Bacon was missing from the earliest known description, in an 1889 New York paper: a Union Club sandwich of turkey or chicken and ham between two slices of toasted graham bread.

One origin story credits the Reuben to a Nebraska grocer's weekly hotel poker game in which city?

Omaha grocer Reuben Kulakofsky asked for corned beef and sauerkraut at the Blackstone Hotel's poker night. The hotel put it on its menu, and in 1956 it won a national sandwich contest.

Which cheese belongs on a classic Reuben?

Swiss cheese melted over corned beef is why the deli icon isn't kosher: Jewish dietary law forbids eating meat and dairy together.

Pat and Harry Olivieri, credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak, originally ran what kind of stand?

Hot dog sales paid the bills until the brothers fried beef and onions for their own meal in the early 1930s; a cab driver smelled it, asked to buy one, and told them to sell that instead.

Which topping became the signature of the sandwiches at Pat's King of Steaks?

Cheez Whiz only reached shops in the early 1950s, some twenty years after Pat and Harry Olivieri's first steak sandwich, which had no cheese at all.

A popular story says the po' boy was named for free sandwiches given to 1929 strikers from which industry?

Streetcars: ex-conductors Bennie and Clovis Martin promised striking carmen free meals and recalled greeting each one with 'Here comes another poor boy.' One local historian doubts the tale.

A po' boy ordered 'dressed' comes with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles and what?

Mayonnaise completes the dressing. The bread was made to order too: in 1929 baker John Gendusa created a long, uniform loaf so several big sandwiches could be cut from each one.

The muffuletta is said to have been created in 1906 at Central Grocery on Decatur Street in which city?

New Orleans grocer Salvatore Lupo is said to have watched Sicilian farmers balance bread, meat, cheese and olive salad on their laps, then packed it all into one round loaf.

In the TV series The Bear, chef Carmy returns home to Chicago to run a family shop built around which sandwich?

Italian beef is a Chicago creation, not an import from Italy. In the usual telling, immigrant families slow-cooked cheap, tough cuts and sliced them very thin to feed a crowd.

Which meat is traditionally layered into a Tampa-style Cuban sandwich but left out of the Miami version?

Genoa salami most likely came from the Italians who worked beside Cubans and Spaniards in Ybor City's cigar factories. Miami's mayor once scoffed that salami is for pizza.

When World War I cut off wheat, bakers in French-ruled Vietnam stretched their baguette dough with which cheap ingredient?

Rice flour made a wartime 'pain de riz' that was dropped once the war ended. The belief that it is what makes bánh mì airy is a myth, says cookbook author Andrea Nguyen.

What is France's grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich called when topped with a fried or poached egg?

Croque madame is the egg-topped twin of the croque monsieur, literally a 'crunch mister' from croquer, to crunch. The egg is often said to suggest a lady's hat.

The Monte Cristo took off after the Blue Bayou Restaurant at which theme park began serving it?

Disneyland didn't invent it: egg-dipped, fried cousins of France's croque monsieur sat in American cookbooks for decades before the Blue Bayou's menu made the Monte Cristo a park legend.

Which lunchbox staple's first known recipe dates from 1901, when its spread was still a tearoom delicacy?

PB&J began posh: Julia Davis Chandler's 1901 recipe called for thin bread fingers with currant or crab-apple jelly. Cheaper peanut butter later turned it into a children's lunch.

Which company patented the sealed crustless sandwich in 1999 and launched Uncrustables the next year?

Smucker's bought the idea from two Midwestern dads who made crustless sandwiches for schools. Its patent on a household sandwich drew ridicule, and in 2005 a federal appeals court judged it too obvious to protect.

The towering Dagwood sandwich is named after a character from which comic strip?

Blondie's husband, Dagwood Bumstead, has raided the fridge for teetering snacks since 1936, and 'Dagwood' now sits in dictionaries as a word for any many-layered sandwich.

One theory traces which saucy sandwich to the 'loose meat sandwiches' a cook sold in 1930s Sioux City, Iowa?

Sloppy joe, in the account Heinz's test kitchen dug up, began in a Sioux City cafe with a cook named Joe. One food encyclopedia is blunter: there was probably never a Joe at all.

Philippe the Original and Cole's, rival claimants to the French dip, are both restaurants in which city?

Los Angeles, not France, is the French dip's home. Philippe's says a cook dropped a roll into the roasting pan by accident; Cole's says a customer with sore gums asked for his bread softened.

Philadelphia's word 'hoagie' is linked to Italian-American workers at which World War I-era shipyard?

Hog Island's Italian shipbuilders were nicknamed 'hoggies', and the name is said to have passed to their big lunch rolls. Historians doubt it, since the word doesn't turn up in print until the 1930s.

What is the traditional New York City name for a submarine sandwich?

Hero has no settled origin; the best guess is that you had to be one to finish it. Its earliest sightings, in 1930s New York, include a list of armored-car guards' slang.

In which city might an old-timer order a sub by asking for a 'spukie'?

Boston's spukie is named for the spuccadella, a long Italian roll, and the word survives mostly in old neighborhoods like Dorchester and South Boston.

Which sandwich chain began in 1965 as a Bridgeport shop named Pete's, after the physicist who lent its teenage founder $1,000?

Subway's first shop lost money, so 17-year-old Fred DeLuca and lender Peter Buck opened a second one 'to create the image of success'. That one lost money too.

The Fool's Gold Loaf, which Elvis is said to have flown from Graceland to eat, came from which city?

Denver's Colorado Mine Company stuffed a whole loaf with peanut butter, jelly and a pound of bacon. As the legend goes, 22 of them met Elvis's jet one night in 1976, and he flew home without leaving the airport.

Britain's chip butty, hymned in a Sheffield United terrace anthem, is buttered bread filled with what?

French fries, or chips to the British, make the chip butty a fried-potato sandwich. Sheffield United fans belt out its praises to the tune of the love ballad 'Annie's Song'.

Which bakery product did the US government briefly ban during World War II?

Sliced bread was banned in January 1943 as a wartime saving, and after a household uproar the order was lifted within two months. The New York Times cheered: 'Housewives' Thumbs Safe Again.'

Coronation chicken, the curried sandwich filling beloved in Britain, was created for which monarch's coronation lunch?

Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation lunch for 350 foreign guests was cooked and served by cookery students from Le Cordon Bleu London. Their menu called the cold curried chicken Poulet Reine Elizabeth.

What does the Danish word 'smørrebrød' literally mean?

Butter and bread is all the name promises: smør og brød, a buttered slice of dense dark rye. The roast beef, herring or prawns piled on top never get a mention.

Caffè Mulassano, whose plaque credits a former owner with inventing the crustless tramezzino, stands in which Italian city?

Turin's Caffè Mulassano, barely 31 square metres, credits Angela Demichelis Nebiolo with inventing the tramezzino in 1926. Bars in Venice claim the soft white sandwich as well.

Legend credits which Italian writer with coining 'tramezzino' to replace the English word 'sandwich'?

Gabriele D'Annunzio gets the credit for the word, a diminutive of tramezzo, 'in between'. It caught on under the Fascist regime's campaign to purge Italian of foreign words.

Guadalajara's torta ahogada takes its name from being what?

Drowned in sauce is what 'ahogada' literally means: the sandwich is dunked whole in chile de árbol salsa. Its salty, crusty birote roll is prized because it survives the soaking.

Kadir Nurman is widely credited with turning doner kebab into a handheld fast food in 1972 at a stall in which city?

West Berlin's hurried workers, Nurman reckoned, wanted a meal they could carry. He never patented the idea or grew rich from it, and said he was glad it gave so many Turkish people a living.

American gyros are beef and lamb, but Greek gyros is traditionally which meat?

Pork is the Greek original, stacked on the spit in thin seasoned slices. The American cone is something else: a pressed loaf of ground beef and lamb.

Falafel is a deep-fried fritter that most likely originated in which country?

Egypt's original falafel was made from fava beans, not chickpeas, and probably emerged in the port of Alexandria. It turns up in Egyptian writing only after the British occupation of 1882.

Which spread did chemist Cyril Callister create in Melbourne from leftover brewer's yeast?

Vegemite sold so poorly that in 1928 it was renamed Parwill, for the pun 'If Marmite... then Parwill'. The joke flopped and the original name came back.

A fluffernutter sandwich pairs peanut butter with what?

Marshmallow creme and peanut butter shared a 1918 recipe booklet from a New England maker, which called the pairing a 'Liberty Sandwich'. Merriam-Webster admitted 'fluffernutter' only in 2021.

In 2006 a lawmaker vowed to 'fight to the death for Fluff' and make the fluffernutter the official sandwich of which state?

Massachusetts is Fluff's home, so when a state senator moved to limit school fluffernutters to one a week, lawmaker Kathi-Anne Reinstein answered with the sandwich bill. Neither idea became law.

Maine made it famous, but the lobster roll is usually traced to Milford in which state?

Connecticut's claim rests on Perry's in Milford, where owner Harry Perry is said to have made the first hot buttered roll for a regular customer in the 1920s. Maine's rolls are usually served cold with mayonnaise.

Katz's Delicatessen on New York's Lower East Side is most famous for which hand-carved meat, piled high on rye?

Pastrami on rye is Katz's calling card. The deli claims an 1888 founding, but a food writer found its founders were children that year and traced their first delicatessen listing to 1911.

Katz's wartime slogan urged customers to 'Send a salami to your boy in the' what?

Army completes the rhyme with salami. The slogan dates from World War II, when salamis went out to sons serving overseas, and Katz's still ships them to military addresses.

Which 1989 film's famous deli scene, capped by 'I'll have what she's having', was shot at Katz's?

When Harry Met Sally gave the scene's deadpan punchline to Estelle Reiner, mother of director Rob Reiner. A sign above the table now reads 'Hope you have what she had!'

National Sandwich Day, November 3, marks which event in the 4th Earl of Sandwich's life?

His birth, long dated 3 November 1718, sets the day, though modern references give 13 November. John Montagu was First Lord of the Admiralty, yet it is the snack bearing his title that keeps his birthday on the calendar.

Until hamburgers overtook it in 2017, which baguette sandwich was France's biggest seller?

Jambon-beurre, just ham and butter, was passed once burgers left the fast-food chains: by 2017 most French sit-down restaurants had one on the menu, and they sold most of the burgers.

The chivito, a steak sandwich stacked with ham, cheese and egg, is often called which country's national sandwich?

Uruguay's chivito means 'little goat' yet holds no goat. The story goes that a Punta del Este chef, asked by a visitor for goat he didn't have, improvised with beef steak, and the name stuck.