The Invention of the Sandwich: Researching Food History
When I began thinking about this course during the summer of 2011, I wanted to incorporate some kind of "food history." As a scholar of British Romanticism (a literary movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain), I'd been thinking about the history of food for a while. "Food and Romanticism" is a hot topic in my field at the moment, in part because the modern consumer of food emerged during the Romantic period. Malls, shops, and the middle class all developed at the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, and the increasing reach and power of the British Empire brought in foods from all over the world for British citizens to consume. As I discuss in my "Recipe History" page, Britain's imperial ties to India and the West Indies play a large role in the kinds of foods available to people at this time. So, there's this inherent link between class, power, and food. The old saying, "You are what you eat," takes on new meaning, because what food you can eat, what you food you have access to, and how much you can eat, all largely depend on socio-economic and cultural factors.
For example, consider the sandwich. There are many, many different kinds of sandwiches, all of which reflect particular historical periods and cultures and contexts. Today, we think of the sandwich as a kind of food available more-or-less to everyone, but that wasn't always the case. I'm always pleased to tell people that the sandwich was invented in the late eighteenth century by John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Montagu had what you might call a gambling addiction. He would sit at a table playing cards for hours at a time, and so he needed a dinner he could easily hold in his hands without getting up from his game. What Montagu usually ate for dinner was meat, which indicated his high social status. Members of the upper classes had easy access to meat, which was a luxury for the working classes, so eating meat was a sign of wealth and power. Accordingly, Montagu had his servants bring him slices of meat between two pieces of bread. He could eat and gamble at the same time. Soon, other aristocrats were ordering "the same as Sandwich!" (wikipedia.org), and the term "sandwich" was born. Over the last 200+ years, many of us have ordered the same as Sandwich, and we now have so many kinds of sandwiches in America alone that it would take a book-length study to examine them all in detail. Suffice it to say that each sandwich has its own cultural history.
But I didn't want to build a course around my particular academic interests (although I was able to work in the invention of the sandwich into this webpage). One more general resource I found useful was The Food Timeline, a website put together by a librarian named Lynne Olver. The site is an actual timeline of food running from 17,000 BCE to the present day, and it's full of links and references to scholarly sources about food. Ever wonder which came first, popcorn or pasta? Check the website (it's popcorn). The website presents a plethora of information, and you can actually see the historical development of food by scrolling down the timeline. If at any point you want to learn more, you can simply click on the link and read more about the food. Learn about the entry of turkey bacon into the food market in 1991. Discover the invention of the grapple in 2004 (it's part grape, part apple--don't ask, check the website). If you're a scholar, the Timeline can be a great place to start your research. If you're interested in food, you can spend hours learning about your favorite (or not-so favorite) foods. Or you can get inspiration for putting together a writing course on food.
For example, consider the sandwich. There are many, many different kinds of sandwiches, all of which reflect particular historical periods and cultures and contexts. Today, we think of the sandwich as a kind of food available more-or-less to everyone, but that wasn't always the case. I'm always pleased to tell people that the sandwich was invented in the late eighteenth century by John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Montagu had what you might call a gambling addiction. He would sit at a table playing cards for hours at a time, and so he needed a dinner he could easily hold in his hands without getting up from his game. What Montagu usually ate for dinner was meat, which indicated his high social status. Members of the upper classes had easy access to meat, which was a luxury for the working classes, so eating meat was a sign of wealth and power. Accordingly, Montagu had his servants bring him slices of meat between two pieces of bread. He could eat and gamble at the same time. Soon, other aristocrats were ordering "the same as Sandwich!" (wikipedia.org), and the term "sandwich" was born. Over the last 200+ years, many of us have ordered the same as Sandwich, and we now have so many kinds of sandwiches in America alone that it would take a book-length study to examine them all in detail. Suffice it to say that each sandwich has its own cultural history.
But I didn't want to build a course around my particular academic interests (although I was able to work in the invention of the sandwich into this webpage). One more general resource I found useful was The Food Timeline, a website put together by a librarian named Lynne Olver. The site is an actual timeline of food running from 17,000 BCE to the present day, and it's full of links and references to scholarly sources about food. Ever wonder which came first, popcorn or pasta? Check the website (it's popcorn). The website presents a plethora of information, and you can actually see the historical development of food by scrolling down the timeline. If at any point you want to learn more, you can simply click on the link and read more about the food. Learn about the entry of turkey bacon into the food market in 1991. Discover the invention of the grapple in 2004 (it's part grape, part apple--don't ask, check the website). If you're a scholar, the Timeline can be a great place to start your research. If you're interested in food, you can spend hours learning about your favorite (or not-so favorite) foods. Or you can get inspiration for putting together a writing course on food.