WHO COOKED THAT UP?

 WHO COOKED THAT UP?

J.J. wonders

 The origin of the name "sandwich" reminds me of a favorite riddle of my brother's when he was about seven or eight years old.
"If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you eat?"
The answer: "The sand which is there."
Although the sandwich has nothing to do with sand, it still has a vague connection with island life, because the Hawai'ian Islands were once called "The Sandwich Islands."  They were named for the very same person for whom the sandwich that we eat was named, John Montagu (1718-1792), the Fourth Earl of Sandwich.
The Earl was the patron of Captain James Cook (the explorer who discovered the Hawai'ian Islands) and, because he was also the First Lord of the Admiralty during the American revolutionary war, he has sometimes been blamed by the British for the loss of the American Colonies.  There is a story that he was an enthusiastic gambler and when he didn't wish to leave the gaming table -- or possibly just his desk -- to go to dinner he would ask for someone to bring him some meat between a couple of slices of bread.  Later, when others began asking for the same thing, they would say something like, "I'll have what Sandwich is having..."  Obviously it caught on, and people just started calling for "a Sandwich" when they wanted meat between two slices of bread.  The word sandwich is therefore an eponym -- a word or phrase whose origin is a person or historical figure.
If the English claim to have invented the sandwich, the French disagree, saying that long before the word sandwich came into use, it was common for workers in the field and those going on a journey to take with them meat or fish between two slices of black bread.
Today the Americans in particular pile their sandwiches high with more than just meat or fish.  Stacked sandwiches may be said to have begun with the "Dagwood," named for Dagwood Bumstead, the husband of the title character in Chic Young's comic strip, "Blondie."   Another kind of stacked sandwich is made in long rolls rather than square bread slices, and they are called variously "submarines," "poor boys," "heroes," and "hoagies."