The year is 529 A.D. and St. Benedict is having dinner with his brethren in his brand new monastery atop Monte Cassino, Italy. A little over a century has passed since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The meal is stew, served in disks of stale bread called trenchers — a sort of edible tableware. In times of abundance, the monks give the trenchers to the poor. In times of famine, they eat them. Benedict and his monks leave the refectory for studies and prayer. In the evening, they return again — this time for soup. Benedict breaks up fresh bread for the monks and passes it around the table, and the monks put it in their soup. Another day is coming to an end in the monastery.
The year is 1339 and a fraternity has gathered in Bremen, Germany for a communal meal. Butterbrot — slices of rye bread topped with butter — has been served to the guests on plates of wood called trenchers. Slices of juicy bread with butter on it is all the rage in Bremen these days. A name swap has quietly taken place, and the tableware has turned into the main attraction.
Meanwhile, in a harbour in Skåne, Sweden — a part of Denmark at the time — a fishing boat brings in a large catch of herring. The supply of herring is greater than the demand this year, so the fisherman has it pickled. Pickled herring is becoming a popular snack in Denmark. People like to put it on smørrebrød — slices of dense rye bread topped with butter and other ingredients.
The year is 1664, and naturalist John Ray — currently on a tour of Europe — is seated in a tavern in Holland. A gentleman calls for the barmaid and orders boterham. John Ray watches as the barmaid brings out a loaf of brown bread that she cuts two thick slices from before putting it away again. She brings out a tray of butter and proceeds to spread some on the slices. Having done this, she grabs a sharp knife and sinks it into a piece of cured meat hanging from a beam in the ceiling, producing thin slices of ham that she proceeds to arrange on the pieces of bread. John Ray has never seen bread, butter and meat prepared in this fashion before and makes a note of it in his journal.
John Montagu looks up from the playing cards in his hands. John — who is the 4th Earl of Sandwich — is currently feeling quite hungry, but isn’t too keen on interrupting his game of cribbage. He thinks for a moment before he calls his valet over, and requests that a piece of meat tucked between two pieces of bread be brought to him. John’s plan works. No need for a fork and no greasy hands. Excellent!
…or so the story goes, anyway.
As a Nordic person, one of the more interesting things about discussing bread and butter with English speakers is that we don’t agree on which is the fundamental form. Is a slice being added to create a sandwich, or is it being removed to create an open-faced sandwich?
Personally, I argue that the single-sliced concoction variously known as smørbrød (Norwegian), smørrebrød (Danish), smørgås (Swedish), Butterbrot (German) or boterham (Dutch) is the fundamental form because the account of John Ray shows that England didn’t know this way of consuming bread as late as the 17th century, meaning that they likely just modified that idea to invent the sandwich once they learned about it.
Bread and butter began as a poor man’s food. All you could afford was bread and butter, and that was it, but Denmark and Germany turned it into a delicacy. It’s unclear who had the idea first. There may have been a parallel evolution. Norway and Sweden largely got it through Danish influence, however.
Old bread found in Pompeii bears some resemblance to trenchers and I suspect that using bread as a plate or bowl might go back to Roman times. There most certainly is a tradition in the Mediterranean countries for using bread as a container for food, such as with pita bread.
It seems likely that the evolution of bread and butter — and later, the sandwich — is connected with the evolution of the loaf of bread. Most bread types in the world aren’t loaves — they’re flat disks or buns. If you’re just using your bread as a food container or for soaking it in soup, there is no need to slice it, so why bake loaves? If you need a smaller piece, you can just bite or break it off.
I had originally planned to interweave this already fascinating tale of bread with the tale of aquavit, but the midnight deadline was looming, so it will have to wait for another time.
Bon appétit!
This is amazing -- Oklomsy