Season 2 (Episode 2): The Sandwich Goes Global

Stephen Bailey (0:00)

Adrienne, do you know the French word for sandwich by any chance?

Adrienne Cheatham (0:04)

Sandwich.

Stephen Bailey (0:05)

Yep, which sounds completely normal now. But in 1802, France did something unthinkable. It borrowed an English culinary word. And as a classically French-trained chef, I want to know how you feel about that indignity.

Adrienne Cheatham (0:20)

Escoffier is probably rolling over in his grave.

Stephen Bailey (0:23)

And Henry V is probably smiling in his. Come on, you know you love a little 100 years more of humor from time to time.

Adrienne Cheatham (0:29)

I mean, if you say so. But what makes it so much worse is that France definitely did not need England to teach it about bread or butter or ham or cheese or charcuterie at all for that matter. They were doing fine on their own.

Stephen Bailey (0:44)

Exactly, which tells us something important. What Britain was exporting wasn't the idea of eating bread with food. France already knew how to do that. What was traveling with something else, a name, a category, and the timing is almost perfect. So in 1802, Britain and France were in a very brief respite from war between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars because they loved to fight, which would begin actually the following year.

Adrienne Cheatham (1:10)

So they stopped fighting just long enough for France to borrow the word sandwich?

Stephen Bailey (1:14)

Apparently, they slid it in. But France was only the beginning. Over the next century, the sandwich would cross the Atlantic, move through the British Empire, reach America and Australia, show up in India, and eventually even turn up in Japan.

Adrienne Cheatham (1:28)

And that raises a pretty incredible question. How does a food named after one English aristocrat become recognizable around the world?

Stephen Bailey (1:36)

Well, that's today's story, how the sandwich learned to travel.

This is Eating History, Food That Changed the World, a show about the dishes that spread, evolved and reshaped culture along the way. I'm Stephen Bailey, a history enthusiast who loves to eat.

Adrienne Cheatham (1:50)

And I'm Chef Adrienne Cheatham, a food enthusiast who loves to history. This season, we're telling the story of sandwiches. And in episode two, we're following the sandwich as it finally leaves Britain and starts traveling around the world.

Stephen Bailey (2:10)

So last episode, we left the sandwich in 18th century Britain. People have been combining food and bread for thousands of years. What the Earl of Sandwich likely deserved real credit for, as we learned, is spurring the creation of a food category known as the sandwich. And once something has a name, you can transmit it. You can write it in a newspaper, put it in a cookbook, order it in a restaurant. Explain it to someone who's never eaten one before.

Adrienne Cheatham (2:35)

And from the food side, that really matters because the category can stay the same, even when the recipe and the components change. If I say I'm making a sandwich, you don't need to know the type of bread yet, or the meat or cheese or other components. You already understand the basic idea and the format. And that gives the food a lot of room to travel.

Stephen Bailey (2:55)

Yeah, and one of the first places we can actually watch that happen is France. So by 1802, the French are already using the English word sandwich. And I love that date because of where it falls historically. Britain and France had been fighting on and off for centuries. It was really one of their favorite pastimes. You're at the Hundred Years' War, you're at the Seven Years' War, the French Revolutionary Wars, and then in 1802, a very brief piece.

Adrienne Cheatham (3:18)

So that brief piece was just long enough to sit and have a snack together.

Stephen Bailey (3:22)

Yeah, they couldn't have had a full meal, but a snack was totally in play and they took advantage of it. And then the war resumes with Napoleon the following year. So even while these countries are competing militarily, politically and commercially, ideas are still crossing the chain.

Adrienne Cheatham (3:36)

And food is really good at doing that because you don't need a diplomatic treaty to understand bread and ham, France already has incredible bread, incredible butter. They've got pâté, cheese, cured meats and mustard.

So when the word sandwich arrives, the French don't need to learn a new cooking technique. They just need to understand the format to put these things together.

Stephen Bailey (4:01)

Yeah, and she's laughing because I really do love mustard, an unreasonable amount, which is why I think France gives us our first big clue. The sandwich doesn't spread because Britain possesses some secret food technology. It spreads because the category itself is quite useful. So across the Atlantic, the category is also becoming established in the US. And one of the people who helps us see that process is Eliza Leslie. Now, Eliza wasn't just a cookbook author. She came from a remarkable Philadelphia family. Her father was a watchmaker who rubbed elbows with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. She spent part of her childhood in England, then returned to Philadelphia, studied cooking, and eventually became one of the best known American cookbook writers of her time.