Making Sandwiches

Britons tend to come over all superior about sandwiches just because some eponymous English blue-blood is supposed to have invented them. In my experience, there are few other countries that would willingly accept the horrifying specimens sold from kiosks, buffets and caffs all over Britain. The fact that Marks and Spencer should have been so quickly able to establish its prepacked versions as the standard by which all other bought sandwiches are now judged should tell us something.

The roots of the problem are twofold. First, there is the lingering post-war British obsession with butter, once a rationed luxury now spread on every slice we can lay our hands on. Second, there is the awe-inspiring British capacity to compromise on food quality for the thrill of saving a penny or two. This meanness is especially prevalent with foods that we don’t take seriously because they are not eaten around a table. If we can buy economy loaves of pre-sliced pap, margarine at a third the price of butter, pink slices of water-injected, mechanically recovered, re-formed pork shoulder more cheaply than ham, we will do so. Thus the British Rail ‘ham sandwich’ was born.