Just Sandwiched

Sandwich is considered a humble food but it need not be. Sometime back, a sandwich in England was touted as the most expensive sandwich at £85. And it was not even at a fancy restaurant in a five-star hotel but at the Selfridges Department Store in London.

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The ingredients, one might want to know, were Wagyu beef, lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de Meaux, red pepper mustard confit and English plum tomatoes, and the bread – 24-hour fermented sourdough bread! Well, though there are many admirers of a well turned out sandwich, but at the same time, for many of them and millions of others, just the basic items of meat and good bread would be enough.

The Archaic Origins of Sandwich

As per information shared by the sandwich enthusiasts, the first recorded sandwich was by the famous rabbi, Hillel the Elder, who lived during the 1st Century BC. He started the Passover custom of sandwiching a mixture of chopped nuts, apples, spices and wine between two matzohs to eat with bitter herbs. The filling between the matzohs served as a reminder of the suffering of the Jews before their deliverance from Egypt, and represented the mortar used by the Jews in their forced labour of constructing Egyptian buildings. Because he was the first known person to do this, and because of his influence and stature in Palestinian Judaism, this practice was added to the Seder, and the Hillel Sandwich was named after him.