The Italian sandwich in history 

If we try to go back in time from the present, to reconstruct the history of this practical and tasty meal, we discover that bread and accompaniment turns out to be a combination that has its roots in the mists of time, perhaps even when bread itself was born.

A gastronomic habit that is alive and widespread in every corner of Italy. A potentially infinite itinerary of taste, which tells the most ancient soul of the craftsmanship handed down over the decades by the tireless work of kiosks, stalls, carts, and which reveals the beating hearts of the many Italian traditions.

A story that seems to begin in literary terms with Diogenes of Sinope, the famous Greek "Cynic", who, rejecting the sumptuousness of tables laden with refined foods, is often described to us in the act of eating lentils in the hollow part of a piece of bread.  

It was in Rome, however, that the city's custom of eating bread with something else in between would spread. What is now called Via Panisperna, in fact, owes its name to the Panis ac perna, sandwiches with must and ham cooked in dried fig water, very popular with the crowd of people who had to provide food and refresh themselves without wasting too much time.

Hence the birth of fast food ante litteram, where fast implies the quick and practical use of express specialties, baked on demand from "street kitchens". And bread, characterized by different doughs depending on the region, acts as the epicenter around which the multifaceted panorama of Italian street food still revolves.

It is now worth recalling the Renaissance era. The text is "The singular Doctrine" by Domenico Romoli which contains interesting recipes, including that of a very tasty sixteenth-century sandwich, prepared with strips of lard placed on individual slices of bread. According to the instructions given by Romoli, the slices were placed under the game that was cooked on a spit. The juices from the cooking of the meat, slowly dripping, gave the bread a robust flavor.

However, it was an eighteenth-century earl who left an indelible mark on the history of sandwich culture: Lord Sandwich who wanted to be prepared for him a simple, practical and tasty food. It was in the mid-1800s that the practice of "tea sandwiches", small sandwiches created for the Duchess of Bedford, also spread in England.

Talking about this topic makes your mouth water, especially when it comes to the Club Sandwich, the most famous of the heirs of the London ancestor. The latter was born in the private circles of the United States in the nineteenth century, and spread in particular in the railway compartments of trains that run along the East Coast. Here, travellers make long journeys together, play and eat. And you have to thank their sweet tooth that the original version of the British snack is starting to get richer, grow in height and contemplate more fillings. The "Club" thus became the fashionable "break" par excellence, and a few years later it again crossed the Atlantic to become part of the refined menus of the grand Parisian hotels. And in fact, if it is true that today it is possible to taste it all over the world, it is equally true that the most delicious are those of the bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, where some of the most famous names of the beautiful world between the two wars, one of them all Ernest Hemingway, were the most affectionate admirers.

During the 20th century in Italy, on a cultural level, the role of the sandwich has always taken on different guises, even if until recently it was relegated to the margins of the Mediterranean diet, because it was always and only considered a "makeshift" meal.

If in the Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine, which called for the abolition of the fork and knife and the creation of "simultaneous and iridescent morsels", there was also room for the Italianization of the term sandwich, here called "traidue", it means that already in the thirties it was included in the list of gastronomic preferences of the Belpaese.

In the Italy of the boom, of the sixteenth century and of the first Sunday out-of-town trips that marked one of the rituals of the Sixties, the sandwich became the emblem of the packed lunch, perhaps stuffed with schnitzel or omelet, a gastronomic snapshot of a nation that was also changing in the choices made at the table.

It was not until the 1970s and the birth of sandwich shops that the two slices of bread with "something inside" became the epi-center of social experiences, moments of meeting and aggregation, especially for the new generations.

While in the Eighties the sandwich became - and we are already off track compared to the more traditionally Italian experience of the sandwich - above all "fast food", with a lot of space given to practicality and fashions imported from America and little attention to taste and originality of the proposals. A slope that takes the sandwich further and further away from the territories of taste and good Italian food.

It is only the most recent history, we are talking about the last decade, in fact, that sanctions the promotion of the vice-meal sandwich in all respects, thanks also to the differentiation of the offers in the windows of the bar counters and the raising of quality standards.