In your opinion: What's a sandwich?

Let’s keep sexual fetishism out of this thread, shall we.

I consider all the OP’s choices to be sandwiches except for the *conventional *hot turkey open faced sandwich. I do, however, consider my *variation *on that theme to meet the sandwich criteria. This is, of course, my cherished closed-faced inverted hot turkey sandwich (patent pending): two slices of hot turkey and gravy enveloping a single slice of bread. IMHO, the advantages of my variation over the conventional open-faced hot turkey sandwich (i.e. twice the flavor/greater portability) far outweigh its disadvantages (i.e. less tidy/more painful).

Winner. I would add that a frankfurter is a Frankfurt-style sandwich. It’s irrelevant whether or not any of you have never heard a hamburger referred to as a sandwich. That’s like saying a Walkman is not a tape player because you’ve never called it that, or that beef bourguignon is not a stew.

Yep. Not sure when or where I heard it, but I once heard an old timer refer to them as a “hamburger sandwich”. It seemed anachronistic and rather formal to me, viewed from my time and place.

Or a pig in a blanket?

You have to be careful with the “food inside of bread” definition. I have a relative that uses that definition and claims fried chicken as a form of sandwich. That way madness lies.

Well, fried chicken between two waffles would be a sandwich.

Hmm. I was going to suggest a stipulation that the bread and the filling must be discrete entities, and not prepared as a solid unit, thus disqualifying pigs in a blanket as well as fried chicken. But then it occurred to me that I would also be disqualifying grilled cheese.

Another bread-wrapped food that muddies the waters is Chinese eggroll. How is that different from a burrito or tamale?

So there are apparently 10 people who do not consider definition 1, “Two pieces of bread with stuff in the middle, served cold/room temperature,” a sandwich? Have a peanut butter and jelly… thing?

Joe

You can’t define a sandwich as anything enclosed or surrounded by bread. I mean, you can if you want, there’s no International Sandwich Police to make you pay for the errors of your ways, but it’s a bit silly and overly broad. At that point you’re classifying pies, pasties, and even pizzas as sandwiches.

Did you actually read the definition above? A pie is a pastry and a pizza is its own category of food.

I would also point out the Wiki definitionof a hamburger, which says, in part:

Whatever will get me through this game of bid whist.

A sandwich is meat between two pieces of bread. That’s your basic sandwich. The rest is just details. And to my mind it has to have meat, or it doesn’t count. I’m not sure what one would call some vegetable matter in between bread, it is very sandwich-like and yet I for one would not consider it a sandwich. And that’s my take.

What, no mention of the napkin sandwich?

For those who insist a hamburger is not a sandwich:

A beef patty and toppings (let’s say cheese, tomato, and lettuce) on a circular bun? Hamburger.

A chicken patty, cheese, tomato, and lettuce on a circular bun? Chicken sandwich.

I eagerly await the explanation for why beef is Different enough that it can’t be in the sandwich category.

Suppose I take a big round of sourdough, cut it in half, and put a personal-sized pizza in between the two halves…would that qualify as a sandwich?

This whole thread is full of people providing their own definition of what constitutes a sandwich, it’s the point of the thread as I understand it. So, if my post doesn’t seem to take into account whichever particular definition you’re asking me about, it is quite possible (perhaps even likely?) that my post wasn’t referring to it in the first place.

To be more clear, I’m wondering why those who consider burritos, tamales, or hot dogs to be sandwiches would or wouldn’t consider a pie or maybe a double stuffed pizza to be a sandwich. Why does pizza or pie get a special distinction but not burritos and tamales? Is it because there’s meat? If that’s the case is an apple pie not a sandwich but a turkey pot pie is? And yes, I recognize that this is all completely arbitrary, I’m just wondering why certain people draw the line where they do.

Also, I wouldn’t argue the point that a hamburger is a kind of sandwich, I think it is. It’s hard to imagine people actually calling it a ‘hamburger sandwich’ though. It seems so redundant, like asking for a ‘hot dog sausage’ or a bowl of ‘gumbo stew.’

Another important characteristic is that a sandwich should be portable, at least in theory (some overstuffed sandwiches might be difficult to actually eat while walking, but they are still sandwiches in form).

Cheese sandwich?

Peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?

Cucumber sandwich?

Vegemite sandwich?

Isn’t this a descriptivist versus prescriptivist thing?

If a large enough proportion of the population calls an open-faced sandwich an “open-faced sandwich” hasn’t the definition of the word been expanded?

Butter or margarine are a necessary part of the definition? If that’s the case then it’s probably been decades since I’ve eaten a sandwich.