The Italian sandwich, a quick "dish" that brings happiness

Each of us has our own memory connected to a nice stuffed sandwich . Maybe a school trip with a loaf filled with salami, but bitten in front of the Colosseum or while looking at the sea. Or again, the memory of a picnic with sandwiches of all flavours, side by side with your first love... or even your second or third, it's fine anyway!

Beyond romanticism, the sandwich is also an example of practicality, to be consumed quickly during work breaks, and of creativity , because the entire edible world can be placed between two or more slices of bread. We can be sure of one thing: there is no Italian who does not have his own, favorite "bread and sauce".

There is no Italian who does not have his own personal morsel of happiness as the gastronomy historian Alberto Capatti tells us in his "History of the Italian sandwich" (Slow Food Editore, 2024, pp. 144), an agile little volume with which he traces curiosities and anecdotes of one of the most common and consumed foods.

Alberto Capatti describes, in fact, a humble but rich epic that starts from the very popular custom of the sandwich as lunch during work both in the fields and in the factory, continues with sandwiches and all their styles in every region, passes through the advent of fast food and ends with the “gourmet” sandwich . A long journey, originating from the birth of the very English sandwich, the sandwich that John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, had one of his servants prepare so he could eat quickly, but tasty, without interrupting his beloved games for even a minute cards. That original sandwich - two slices of crustless bread with cold meat and cheese in between - paved the way for the very Milanese michetta with salami, the loaf of pork typical of central Italy and the thousand regional variations offered by our beautiful country .

The sandwich is mentioned in many novels, as Capatti tells us, and has attracted the attention of writers so much so that D'Annunzio was responsible for the term tramezzino while the Futurists of the early twentieth century Italianized the sandwich calling it "traidue" .

Still crossing the Peninsula, the sandwich can become stuffed, stuffed and even pregnant, as they say in Florence, while how the bread is cut can tell us something about the habits and even the class of those who hold the knife. The rich and nobles cut the bread vertically, while the people cut the bread horizontally. Just as rich people used to eat a sandwich without a crust, while those who had to tighten their belts kept the crust, indeed they kept it.

In the volume, created with the support of the Italian Sandwich Academy, thousands of different breads, thousands of different ingredients and combinations offer an unparalleled excursus, which crosses the history of Italy and its foods, exactly like the traditional dishes present in much more "noble" recipe books. Taking this journey through time allows us to think about the meanings we could give every time we casually say: "I'm just eating a sandwich!".