A Round of Johns
Ah, the sandwich, the most noble of foods. From the toast sandwich, yes, Mrs. Beeton’s 1861 Book of Household Management did include a recipe in a section for invalids, although she did note “This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid”1, to the latest monstrosity gracing your fast food palace of choice, humanity has long strived to place almost anything and everything between two slices of bread.
Although apocryphal, the story of John Montagu (1718 – 1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich, needs to be mentioned. While it seems more than likely that people had long been placing other foods between slices of bread, it falls to him, his butler or cook, and his love of gambling for the nomenclature that we use to this day. The story goes that the Earl needed a way to eat without getting his cards greasy whilst playing cards and requested that some meat be placed between two slices of bread to circumvent the problem. From that point forward, it became common to nip at for a Montagu, or ask if your friends would like a round of Johns with their tea.
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136-images.html#id10241:~:text=1877.%20INGREDIENTS.%E2%80%94Thin,of%20an%20invalid. ↩︎
