The Earl of Sandwich probably wasn’t gambling
The sandwich is named after an 18th-century earl. The famous story that he invented it at the card table comes from a travel book’s gossip.
Nobody invented putting food between bread. People across the world had done it for centuries. What John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792) provided was the name.
The gambling story
The famous account comes from the French writer Pierre-Jean Grosley, who spent a year in London in 1765 and published Londres in 1770. He reported that a minister of state spent long hours at the gaming table and called for salt beef between two slices of toast, so he could eat without stopping play or getting grease on his cards.
It became the standard origin story, and it fitted the earl’s reputation as a rake.
The desk alternative
Sandwich was also a hard-working politician: First Lord of the Admiralty three times, and a patron of Captain Cook (who named the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, after him). His biographer N. A. M. Rodger argues that, given his workload, he was more likely eating at his desk. Grosley’s story reads like London gossip.
Either way, the name caught on among fashionable Londoners: ordering “the same as Sandwich” became ordering “a sandwich”. It may be the most widely used aristocratic title in the world.
Bring it up
“The sandwich is named after the Earl of Sandwich, but the gambling story probably isn’t true. He was more likely working late.”
Follow the thread
- Same patternGeneral Tso’s chicken is unknown in General Tso’s home province A dish named after a famous man who had nothing to do with it, or very little.
- Same patternThe pizza Margherita story is probably a myth A dish named after an aristocrat, with an origin story better than the evidence.
- RelatedWhy do we say “OK”? A person’s name, or nickname, turned into an everyday word.
