What makes a good sandwich?

[Jenise]

Cynthia, you're right. Let's write a Craig's List Personals Ad for it!


sammich4m
I'm housesitting in Bellingham this weekend and would love some company. NSA, just a lip smacking good time when I spread my bread and show you my juicy pink insides. Can host. You: any size, drama free, no D & D, hungry. Send pic of beer.

LOL!!!!!!

You have a real gift for this kind of writing, Jenise!

[James Roscoe]

I wonder how many hits this thread has had after Jenise's post?

What makes a good sandwich? Wonder Bread, of course. I mean, I wonder if it's bread.

[Jenise]

Cynthia: what you're saying is, I have a good future as a slut?

Larry: the other day I was surprised to see a Wonder Bread truck pass me on the freeway. Didn't realize Wonder Bread was still around. I was even more surprised because this was in Canada!

So Jenise, you're 5'7", blonde, stacked, and have hot, pink, juicy insides (did I imagine the 'hot' part)? I can't wait to see that pic in my 'Portrait' thread!

Excuse me for one moment....


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH......


O.k., I'm back. I think what really makes a good sandwich is the bread. I have been to sooooo many places that f**k up a good sandwich just by using shabby bread. It's not that hard to find or make good bread. It just really makes a difference.

rwj

I have a good future as a slut?

I'd say a past, not a future.

the obvious sandwich idea, the one where the male is between Cynthia and Jenise.

That would be me.

rwj

Larry: the other day I was surprised to see a Wonder Bread truck pass me on the freeway. Didn't realize Wonder Bread was still around. I was even more surprised because this was in Canada!

Being mostly air, Wonder Bread is inexpensive to transport.

[Jenise]

and have hot, pink, juicy insides

No, no, NOT ME, that was written in the 1st person from the sandwich's point of view.

Another great topic! I hope that (at least some of) you have heard of de Gouy's US bible on sandwiches, more info below. Worth seeking out. Full of ideas still fresh today (and an example of what's wrong with the mind-set that assumes all good US cookbooks appeared after, say, 1970, or come from best-seller lists, bright displays at the bookstore, etc. etc.).

I won't run on here about the sandwich culture of Vienna (devastating counterexample to any US prejudices vs. European sandwiches and arguably a reason to live in Vienna) or history of the Reuben (and general displacement of Russian Dressing in the US by "Thousand Island") but have posted much research elsewhere on those topics so it's available.

About de Gouy's sandwich manual (only one of the topics the popular pre-war writer-chef is known for):
--
One of the most useful and appetizing cookbooks ever published in the US. Louis Pullig de Gouy's Sandwich Manual for Professionals (1939), more readily available in the 1980s reprint, The Ultimate Sandwich Book (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1982, ISBN 0894711636 or 0894711644).

Variations on the hamburger that are now forgotten (or "discovered"). 63 pages on "Club, or Three-Decker" sandwich recipes alone, several per page. Savory toasts with things like Roquefort cheese and pecans (broiled). Seasoned and compound butters (with almond, anchovy, caviar, chutney, garlic, lobster, mustard, potted meat -- 40 recipes) to liven up sandwiches. Fried-chicken sandwiches. Meat or crab salads to fill sandwiches. Nut fillings. Cottage cheese and caraway-seed sandwiches. Sandwiches with corned-beef hash and brown gravy. Open-faced sandwiches. With caviar and hot cheese-mushroom sauce. (Dusted with paprika.)

The late 1930s may have been the peak of sandwich culture in North America. People are only slowly rediscovering inspirations already catalogued in this book.

De Gouy emphasized that the person Sandwich himself (18th-century playboy earl) is important for naming, not inventing, it. De Gouy cited Greek, Roman, and Babylonian taste for "a wedge of meat between two slabs of bread" but traced the modern sandwich to a popularization by the teacher Rabbi Prince Hillel after 70 BC with residue in symbolic Passover custom (unleavened bread with bitter herbs and haroseth, chopped nuts and apple). "This is to prove that sandwiches are as old as bread and cheese, and Romans and Danes and Saxons and Normans must have eaten them from one end of England to another." (This section is unfortunately much abridged in the 1982 reprint.) Despite these and other authoritative publications, people continue eagerly to mix up the inventing of sandwiches with the naming. (With renewed vigor today via Internet, Wikipedia, etc.)

and have hot, pink, juicy insides

No, no, NOT ME, that was written in the 1st person from the sandwich's point of view.

Bummer.

rwj