This Book Contains a Century of Historical Sandwiches

Since 2021, Barry Enderwick has charmed the Internet with his unfiltered reviews of “olden tymee” sandwiches. There’s the 1936 banana, cheese, pickle sandwich (“I thought it was going to be weird, but it’s not bad actually”) and the 1926 Crisco sandwich, made with creamed vegetable shortening on white bread “like some evil frosting,” he says. “You could hork it down.”

Sandwiches of History may have started on a whim, but Enderwick’s followers have mushroomed to well over 600,000 between Instagram and TikTok. The sandwiches themselves, sourced from the last century of cookbooks, are a mix of international favorites, family recipes, old-school clunkers, and the occasional outstanding flavor combination. Much of the project’s charm hinges on Enderwick himself, a marketing executive by day who posts about sandwiches with both earnestness and unfailing good humor.

After reviewing thousands of sandwiches, Enderwick has compiled 100 of his favorites into Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook. From a mock banana sandwich from WWII to the Kentucky hot brown, this book is a delicious deep-dive into one of the world’s most amorphous food categories.

Gastro Obscura spoke with Enderwick about what constitutes a sandwich, the concept of buttered Swiss cheese, and whether the “moist maker” sandwich is really any good.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When we spoke a couple years ago, “Sandwiches of History” was just getting going. Since then, it’s really taken off.

Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s fun. It’s like, how did this happen? Christine, my significant other, is very proud of it. It can be obviously challenging when it comes to space in the fridge and cabinets, but all in all, very positive.

Has the concept of a sandwich changed over the last century?

Early on, the sandwich was not intended as a meal. It was more like a snack. When you start to get into the ’40s, ’50s, they start to get a little bit more substantial. Then by mid-century, you got these four-deckers.

There is a recipe in my cookbook that uses four slices of bread. This was adapted from Good Housekeeping’s Book of Breads and Sandwiches from 1958. It’s called the “Sophisticated Club Sandwich,” and it is wild, but shockingly good. It has American cheese, ham, pineapple, peanut butter, unsweetened coconut, bacon, and avocado.

Where do you look for sandwich inspiration? Do readers send in their own recipes?

I started asking for [audience members] to send in “Sandwiches from Our History,” which are recipes from a family, but not necessarily in a cookbook. So ‘My uncle used to make this, my grandpa, my mom, my grandma used to make this’—those kinds of sandwiches.

I also do “Sandwiches from Entertainment History,” where it’s sandwiches from TV shows and movies. I did Gene Kelly’s “Greatest Man sandwich.” Basically, you take French bread, you put on mashed potatoes, salt, pepper, thinly sliced white or red onions, mayonnaise, and you put it under the broiler. It is delicious. I’ve also done the “moist maker” [from Friends].

What exactly goes into a “moist maker?”

It’s basically all the stuff from Thanksgiving dinner, like sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, stuffing. It’s two-decker, so there are three slices of bread, and then the middle slice of bread is soaked in gravy. That way it’s moist, and it is really delicious.

Actually, I did a recipe remix on it that I think is even better, where I took the stuffing and waffled it, and that became the bread for the sandwich. You stick that middle waffle in gravy, and then you’ve got this waffle, your turkey, your cranberry, and your potatoes.

How often are you pleasantly surprised by a dubious-sounding recipe?

It’s more often that I read a recipe and go, “This is not going to be great” and it isn’t. But every once in a while, I’m surprised. There was a Sandwich of Our History not too long ago that called for cooking sardines with maple syrup. I’m like, “This sounds gross.” And I tasted it. It was like, “Oh, no, it’s fantastic.”

I highly recommend you make it. It’s the sweet and savory sardine sandwich. It was something that the person’s grandfather used to make.

What’s one of the most vile creations you’ve come across?

The yeast sandwich [of 1936] was terrible. Back in the ‘30s, Fleischmann’s decided they wanted to sell more yeast because people were not baking at home as much. They got together with a marketing company in New York, and they came up with this idea to “eat fresh yeast for health.”

Apparently everyone bought into it for a while, so much so that there was a recipe for a yeast sandwich. You take a compressed yeast cake and you moisten it with table sauce, which would be Worcestershire or ketchup, and you put that on buttered bread.

I would say the weirdest sandwich of all, from the 1909 Up to Date Sandwich Book, was the dairy sandwich. It was literally a slice of Swiss cheese, and you buttered it, and you put another slice of Swiss cheese on it. That was it. No bread.

That really begs the question: what do you consider a sandwich?

I don’t really do a purity test when it comes to sandwiches. You could say that the butter was sandwiched between the two slices of cheese if you really wanted to get nitty about it. But I don’t get hung up on open-face sandwiches, not having a second piece of bread, or sandwiches with sauces poured over them or anything like that. I think that they’re all fair game.

I just did the Halifax donair from Nova Scotia, which is basically a pita that’s wrapped around meat. So is that a sandwich? And it’s like, you know what? It is. People call it a sandwich. They think of it as a sandwich. I’m going to go with it as a sandwich.

The eternal question: hot dogs, sandwich or not?

I’m of the opinion that a hot dog is a sandwich. I’ve got two answers. One is deeply unsatisfying and the other is more logic-based. The first one is, the whole concept of a sandwich is made up. We call it a sandwich because some guy in the 1760s got his name on it. But do we really think people weren’t putting stuff between bread before that? So why not just be free to enjoy a hot dog as a sandwich?

Now, the more logical explanation I have is that if you look at a hot dog bun, the two sides are pretty equal in thickness, right? The hinge is not. The hinge is very much an accommodation for the tubular meat. To me, that is a sandwich.

When people get nitty about what is or isn’t a sandwich, I try to encourage them to knock it off. You’re going to not try something and you’re going to miss out on something delicious.

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