Types of Sandwich

AMERICAN SANDWICH
Club sandwich was founded in London, but classic American sandwiches include cream cheese (cream cheese was invented in Philadelphia), the cheesesteak, the hamburger, the peanut butter (an American invention/PB and jelly) sandwich, sloppy joe and the American-born mega-sandwich, the submarine (a.k.a. hoagie, grinder, etc.).

You’ll find many more inventions in this glossary. While the sandwich was first popularized in England, it is America that has taken this food to heart, embracing it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and creating as many types of sandwiches as there are ingredients.

BÁHN MÍ A Vietnamese baguette made from wheat and rice flour, and also the name of the sandwich that is served on the baguette. A fusion foodphó) shops in areas with a Vietnamese immigrant community. Here’s the own bánh mì recipe. from French colonial Indochina and Vietnamese cuisines, bánh mì combines French ingredients such as baguettes, pâté and mayonnaise with native Vietnamese ingredients such as coriander, hot peppers, fish sauce, pickled daikon and carrots. They are sold at small bánh mì and noodle ( BARBECUE SANDWICH A sandwich of shredded beef or pork plus barbecue sauce on a roll.

Bánh mì, a Vietnamese version of a submarine sandwich. See the Cuban version below.

BLT
A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, often served as a triple-decker sandwich on toast. While toast, bacon and lettuce were enjoyed at table since Roman times, tomatoes came from the New World in the 1600s and were considered poisonous, enjoyed as houseplants until the 1800s.

At the same time, there was no mayo for the BLT: Mayonnaise sauce was invented in 1756, but it was not until years later that the great French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) lightened the original recipe by blending the vegetable oil and egg yolks into an emulsion, creating the mayonnaise that we know today. The ingredients finally came together: We know that BLTs were served as tea sandwiches in the late Victorian era (late 1800s). The earliest recipes for BLTs were listed under different names in cookbooks. The abbreviated name most likely came from diner slang: “Give me a BLT on a raft,” i.e., a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on toast.

A BLT: bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.  Photo courtesy Niman Ranch.

BREAKFAST SANDWICH
Eggs Benedict—eggs and Canadian bacon atop an English muffin—may have been the first official, open-face breakfast sandwich, followed by the bagel with lox and cream cheese. Eggs and sausage patties or ham have found their way atop English muffins ever since (popularized by McDonald’s Egg McMuffin in the 1960s). In the 1970s, the concept evolved to the breakfast croissant sandwich, and in the 1990s, the breakfast burrito—scrambled eggs and sausage or bacon inside a tortilla wrap.