Sandwich history

Picked up some beef stew with a piece of bread, and wondered if you really need two slices. Was the first sandwich more like this, a kind of Anglo taco?

The modern sandwich is named after Lord Sandwich, but the circumstances of its invention and original use are the subject of debate. A rumour in a contemporaneous travel book by Pierre-Jean Grosley, Tour to London (published 1772), formed the popular myth that bread and meat sustained Lord Sandwich at the gambling table,^[31] but Sandwich had many habits, including the Hellfire Club, and any story may be a creation after the fact.^[32] Lord Sandwich was a very conversant gambler, the story goes, and he did not take the time to have a meal during his long hours playing at the card table. Consequently, he would ask his servants to bring him slices of meat between two slices of bread, a habit known among his gambling friends. Other people, according to this account, began to order “the same as Sandwich!”, and thus the “sandwich” was born.^[33] The sober alternative to this account is provided by Sandwich’s biographer N. A. M. Rodger, who suggests that Sandwich’s commitments to the navy, to politics, and to the arts mean that the first sandwich was more likely to have been consumed at his work desk.^[34]

Islands named after Sandwich by Capt. James Cook

Lord Sandwich was a great supporter of Captain James Cook. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Sandwich approved Admiralty funds for the purchase and fit-out of the Resolution, Adventure and Discovery for Cook’s second and third expeditions of exploration in the Pacific Ocean. He also arranged an audience with the King, which was an unusual privilege for a lower ranking officer.^[37] In honour of Sandwich, Cook named the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) after him, as well as the South Sandwich Islands in the Southern Atlantic Ocean and Montague Island in the Gulf of Alaska.^[

This guy came damn close to having two great things, the sandwich and Hawaii, named after himself.