History of Sandwiches Timeline

Two phrases found throughout English drama from the 16th and 17th centuries suggest that bread with meat or other fillings was a familiar concept in England long before the sandwich received its modern name.

Image source: Cuban sandwich

In the Netherlands of the seventeenth century, the naturalist John Ray observed that in taverns beef hung from the rafters 'which they cut into thin slices and eat with bread and butter laying the slices upon the butter,' revealing the Dutch belegde broodje, an open-faced sandwich, was as yet unfamiliar in England.

Image source: John Ray

The sandwich is named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an eighteenth-century English aristocrat credited as the inventor of a certain roast-beef sandwich. His title became permanently attached to the food that bears it today.

Image source: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich

The rumour about the origin of the sandwich's name appeared in Pierre-Jean Grosley's Londres (Neuchâtel, 1770), translated as A Tour to London in 1772; Grosley's impressions had been formed during a year in London in 1765.

Image source: Pierre-Jean Grosley

The rumour in its familiar form appeared in Pierre-Jean Grosley's Londres (Neuchâtel, 1770). It described how John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, ate roast-beef sandwiches so he could remain at the gaming table without leaving for meals.

Grosley's Londres was translated as A Tour to London in 1772, spreading to English readers the story that the sandwich was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who supposedly ate beef between slices of bread while gambling.

The sandwich's popularity in England increased dramatically during the nineteenth century, when the rise of industrial society and the working classes made fast, portable, and inexpensive meals essential for workers with limited time to eat.

In London, for example, at least seventy street vendors were selling ham sandwiches by 1850, demonstrating how deeply the sandwich had penetrated everyday urban life among the working classes during the industrial era.

During the 1850s, sandwich bars became an important form of eating establishment in western Holland, typically serving liver and salt beef sandwiches to customers seeking quick and affordable meals.

By the early 20th century, as bread became a staple food of the American diet, conditions were set for the sandwich to become one of America's most common quick meals, following the pattern already widespread in the Mediterranean.