Hard as it might to look past one ’s own personal account with the sandwich — say , the report - udder - lunch sandwich Mom always made or twenty-four hour period - after - Thanksgiving bomb sandwiches we always scarfed down with Dad — the evolution of that small food begins long before the modern earned run average . In fact , common wisdom holds that the sandwich can be traced as far back as the first century B.C.E. , when Rabbi Hillel the Elder take Elia and acerb herbs and , well , sandwich them between two bit of matzo . In just interpreting a biblical mandate — “ They shall eat the physique that nighttime , roasted on the first ; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall use up it ” — Rabbi Hillel inadvertently devise the “ Hillel sandwich ” that has grown into one of the most significant constituent of the mod Passover Seder .
The Hillel sandwich was intended to remind whomever run through it about humanity ’s pain and woe ; the caustic - herbaceous plant miscellany stands in for the “ mortar ” used by Jews to construct buildings for their Egyptian master . Fun ? Not so much . Nor do things get all that much well for many , many C : during the Middle Ages in Europe , stale piece of bread , or “ trencher , ” were smothered with meat and fed to beggars and dogs . The open - faced sandwich — today they ’re bid “ tartines ” by voguish restaurants and coffeehouse — started out as nothing more than a board scrap .
That ’s a middling depressing beginning to a food revolution , but thing start to take care up from there . Sandwiches take on a more famed personality in the sixteenth and 17th centuries , when they made a few elusive , yet not unnoticed , cameos in lit . A 2004 clause in food for thought journal Gastronomica item a few specific instance : a sixteenth - century play here , George Peele ’s 1595 play " The Old Wives Tale , " a 17th - C work by prominent English playwright Thomas Heywood . All of these mentions do n’t actually employ the parole “ sandwich ” but rather some variation on “ bread and center ” or “ bread and cheese . ”
From there , the sandwich evolve into a food enjoy by the English upper crust at members - only men ’s clubs , but there exist a few conflicting composition about who really manufacture what we consider a sandwich today . It was n’t until 1762 that the word “ sandwich ” would appear in print in English writer Edward Gibbon ’s first - hand explanation of a scene from The Cocoa Tree , a rose hip , high - bon ton London gentlemen ’s resort that was pop with politicians at the prison term and “ affords every evening a heap sincerely English , ” Gibbon compose . “ Twenty or thirty , perhaps , of the first men in the realm , in point of fashion and fate , supping at little tables shroud with a napkin , in the midriff of a coffee bean - room , upon a bit of cold kernel , or a sandwich , and drinking a deoxyephedrine of biff . ”
At the very same fourth dimension Gibbon ’s impressions were published , another sandwich was brew at another London hangout : the Shakespeare Tavern , where men congregating for their “ beefsteak nine ” get - togethers — undivided , male person - only dinner party — nosh on the chef ’s reading of a sandwich : beefsteaks , literally , cushion between bread .
Others still draw the present - daytime sandwich to the mid-1700s , when British national leader John Montague , the fourth Earl of Sandwich ( a rubric that actually cite to Sandwich , Kent , in southeast England , and not the subject of this article ) routinely demanded his pantryman function him a spell of salinity beef cushion between two pieces of toasted bread . You know , so he did n’t have to get up from the card table — Montague was a infamous risk taker . In twist , others around him start to order “ the same as Sandwich ! ”
inscribe 1840 , when Philadelphia - born and English - bred cookbook author and etiquette expert Eliza Leslie published " way for Cookery . " In doing so , “ Miss Leslie , ” as she was known , introduced the English - talk world to the ham sandwich . She wrote : “ Cut some fragile piece of staff of life very neatly , having more or less buttered them ; and , if you choose , spread on a very little mustard . Have ready some very thin slices of cold moil ham , and consist one between two slash of bread . You may either roll them up , or lie them flat on the plates . They are used at supper or at lunch . ” Yes , even in those days the sandwich was imposing enough for the dinner party table .
Its Iowa inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder , though , who played an integral part in our excogitation of this extremely celebrated food . Considered “ the father of sliced bread , ” Rohwedder invented a machine that could both slice and wrap moolah , hasten American bakeshop ’ output time and ensuring that their most basic merchandise did n’t go dusty . The Rohwedder Bread Slicer was first used by Missouri ’s Chillicothe Baking Company in 1928 . What ’s Chillicothe ’s official city shibboleth now ? Yep , you guess it : “ the Greatest affair Since Sliced Bread . ”
