For many years I
pondered the fine art of sandwich making. With each sandwich I made, I attempted
to push forth the frontiers of the art by trying something new, and
occasionally I stumbled upon a gastronomical discovery. Eventually my
experimenting came to a standstill in an eater’s-block sort of way. Discouraged
by my lack of progress, I decided to look back to the sandwich’s long and illustrious
history for inspiration.
It turns out that the
origin of the modern sandwich can be traced back to the year 1762 when an
inveterate gambler and card player was dealt a dire dilemma in which his sudden
lust for luscious lamb was juxtaposed with the knowledge that satisfying his
craving would result in him having to abandon his card hand on the table in
order to wash the meaty goodness from the biological ones on the end of his
wrists all in an attempt to keep his cards from getting greasy.
If you read that in one breath, take this moment to pat yourself on the back...Got your breath back yet? Great.
In a moment of pure brilliance
he requested that his servant serve him the cuts of meat twixt the two halves
of a loaf of bread. The man in question was one John Montagu, the 4th Earl of
Sandwich, who then leant his title to the creation and thusly one of the great
meals of today was born.
 |
| The 4th Earl of Sandwich, no doubt wearing a wig... |
Why he didn’t just ask for
the lamb to be cut into bite size strips that could be eaten with a fork is puzzling
to me. But had he thought things through, we would now be unable to enjoy the
many unhealthy benefits caused by a reliance on bread as a culinary staple.
Spurred on by my useless
bit of googling I continued my pursuit of the finest sandwich. In order to comprehensively
prove what the best fillings are I decided to get technical. After much
research and disdain at how other websites had based their ‘top ten’ sandwiches
on nothing other than opinionated preferences, I conducted a series of
scientific tests involving my dog and a packet of rubber bands to
systematically measure the greatness of all sandwich toppings in the world. Following
each test the food substance was assigned a value between 7 and 53 using the Raadular
Flavour Gauge.
The results were quite staggering…
In an unlikely turn of
events, every single one of the six toppings tested came out with a score of
42.
Unsure as to what caused
the anomaly and quite hungry at that point, I decided to eschew my quest for the time being,
put down my pooch, and have cereal for supper instead.
