In British popular culture, the British Rail sandwiches were the sandwiches sold for consumption on passenger trains of the former British Rail (BR), during the period of nationalisation from 1948 to 1994. Comedic references to the sandwiches established it as emblematic of the unappetising fare then available aboard Great Britain's railway service.
According to former BR caterer Myrna Tuddenham, the poor reputation of BR sandwiches likely derived from the practice of keeping the sandwiches "under glass domes on the counters in refreshment rooms until the corners turned up". [1] Despite the many jokes at its expense, British Rail documents show that in 1993, its last full year as a public company, eight million sandwiches were sold. [2] Historian Keith Lovegrove wrote that it was "a sandwich of contradictions; it could be cold and soggy, or stale and hard, and the corners of the isosceles triangle-shaped bread would often curl up like the pages of a well-thumbed paperback". [3]
Sandwiches served on trains or at railway stations were a source of amusement long before the advent of British Rail, as evidenced by a humorous column in the October 1884 edition of the American Railroad Journal:
The existence of the railway sandwich and its spread throughout the country has long been a source of terror to the people and of anxiety to the medical fraternity who have been able to cope with it successfully. [4]
The British Rail sandwich was often ridiculed on British radio and television and in numerous books. An episode of The Goon Show entitled "The Collapse of the British Railway Sandwich System" was first broadcast on the BBC Home Service on 8 March 1954. [5] In 1972, the show Milligna (or Your Favourite Spike) included spoof news items, including "Long-missing Van Gogh ear found in a British Rail sandwich". [6]
In his book Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life From Breakfast to Bedtime, Joe Moran describes the British Rail sandwich as "a metaphor for social decline since it became a running joke on The Goon Show". [7] Bill Bryson wrote in Notes from a Small Island : "I can remember when you couldn't buy a British Rail sandwich without wondering if this was your last act before a long period on a life-support machine." [8]
The British Rail sandwich has been used as a negative point of comparison for other ready-to-serve meals, especially regarding transportation in the United Kingdom, [9] and representative of the negative effects of British nationalisation of industry in the middle of the 20th century. A 1997 article in The Independent referred to the sandwich as "an indictment of statist, bureaucratic corporations" privatised by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had "swept aside James Callaghan, prices and incomes policies and the British Rail sandwich". [10]
It has also been used as a negative point of comparison for poor service in general. In 1988, Investors Chronicle described British Telecom's quality of service as "attracting the sort of public abuse once reserved for the British Rail sandwich". [11] In 2007, Sir Michael Bishop, then chairman of airline BMI, wrote that Heathrow Airport "now has the reputation formerly held by the British Rail sandwich". [12]
In 2001, the National Railway Museum in York discovered a November 1971 document featuring sandwich recipes, issued by Director of Rail Catering Bill Currie. The document states its aim to make BR meals "the best on the track" and describes the precise amount of sandwich filling to be placed on the sandwich. The recipe also specifies, in order to make the sandwiches attractive – and to be able to tell what was inside – at least a third of the filling be placed in the centre, so that when cut diagonally, the customer would see the contents. [1] For luncheon meat and sardines, the filling should total two-thirds of an ounce of meat. On an egg and cress sandwich, each sandwich was to contain one-twelfth of a punnet of cress. The document was featured in a 2002 exhibition of the National Railway Museum, "British Rail – A Moving Story". [2] A typical ham sandwich would contain one slice of ham with another slice folded in half and placed diagonally over the first one. [13] When the sandwich was cut diagonally it would make it appear that it contained three slices of ham when in reality it only contained two.
In France, this kind of unappetising sandwich is named "sandwich SNCF" or "sandwich TGV", by assimilation with the quality of sandwiches sold in French trains, especially high-speed trains. In popular humour, this name refers to any bad, meagre and expensive ready-to-eat food. Since 1 March 2009, sandwiches sold onboard TGVs have become cheaper. [14]
In Greece, these kinds of sandwiches are called Καραβίσια (karavisia) or καραβίσιος καφές (literally 'lobster coffee"), an idiomatic term which translates roughly to "something that is on a ship", and referring to low-quality but very expensive sandwiches, like those sold on passenger ships. [15]
A sandwich is a dish typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a portable, convenient finger food in the Western world, though over time it has become prevalent worldwide.
A BLT is a type of sandwich, named for the initials of its primary ingredients, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. It can be made with varying recipes according to personal preference. Simple variants include using different types of lettuce or tomatoes, toasting or not, or adding mayonnaise. More pronounced variants can include using turkey bacon or tofu in place of bacon, removing the lettuce entirely, or adding other ingredients such as a fried egg, avocado, or sprouts.
Roast beef is a dish of beef that is roasted, generally served as the main dish of a meal. In the Anglosphere, roast beef is one of the meats often served at Sunday lunch or dinner. Yorkshire pudding is a standard side dish. Sliced roast beef is also sold as a cold cut, and used as a sandwich filling. Leftover roast beef may be minced and made into hash.
An open sandwich, also known as an open-face/open-faced sandwich, bread baser, bread platter or tartine, consists of a slice of bread or toast with one or more food items on top. It has half the number of slices of bread compared to a typical closed sandwich.
A tea sandwich is a small prepared sandwich meant to be eaten at afternoon teatime to stave off hunger until the main meal.
Pork roll is a processed meat commonly available in New Jersey and neighboring states. It was developed in 1856 by John Taylor of Trenton, and sold as "Taylor's Prepared Ham" until 1906. Though since then food labeling regulations require Taylor and all other manufacturers to label it "pork roll", people in northern New Jersey still refer to it as "Taylor ham". The "Is it pork roll or Taylor ham?" question is a notable element of New Jersey culture, and the division over what name one uses divides the state along roughly north–south geographic lines. A 2016 reader poll including more than 70,000 respondents from all 565 municipalities across New Jersey found that the dividing line straddled the Union–Middlesex county border in the east and followed Interstate 78 through the middle of Somerset and Hunterdon counties in the west.
Schnitzel is a thin slice of meat. The meat is usually thinned by pounding with a meat tenderizer. Most commonly, the meat is breaded before frying. Breaded schnitzel is popular in many countries and is made using veal, pork, chicken, mutton, beef, or turkey. Schnitzel originated as wiener schnitzel and is very similar to other breaded meat dishes.
A rissole is "a ball or flattened cake of chopped meat, fish, or vegetables mixed with herbs or spices, then coated in breadcrumbs and fried."
Francesinha is a Portuguese sandwich, originally from Porto, made with layers of toasted bread and assorted hot meats such as roast, steak, wet-cured ham, linguiça, or chipolata over which sliced cheese is melted by the ladling of a near-boiling tomato-and-beer sauce called molho de francesinha. It is typically served with french fries.
An egg sandwich is a sandwich with some kind of cooked egg filling. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelette, sliced boiled eggs and egg salad are popular options. In the last case, it may be called an egg salad sandwich.
A breakfast sandwich is any sandwich filled with foods associated with breakfast. Breakfast sandwiches are served at fast food restaurants and delicatessens, sold in supermarkets, or commonly made at home. Different types of breakfast sandwich include the bacon sandwich, the egg sandwich, and the sausage sandwich; or various combinations thereof, like the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. The breakfast sandwich is related to the breakfast roll.
Bauru is a popular Brazilian sandwich. The traditional recipe calls for cheese melted in a bain-marie, slices of roast beef, tomato and pickled cucumber in a pão francês with the crumb removed.
The ham sandwich is a common type of sandwich. The bread may be fresh or toasted, and it can be made with a variety of toppings including cheese and vegetables like lettuce, tomato, onion or pickle slices. Various kinds of mustard and mayonnaise are also common.
The peanut butter and banana sandwich (PB&B), or peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich (PB,B&B), sometimes referred to as an Elvis sandwich, the Velvet Elvis, or simply the Elvis, is a sandwich with toasted bread, peanut butter, sliced or mashed banana, and occasionally bacon. Honey or jelly is seen in some variations of the sandwich. The sandwich is frequently cooked in a pan or on a griddle.
A tramezzino is an Italian sandwich constructed from two slices of soft white bread, with the crusts removed, usually cut in a triangle. Popular fillings include tuna, olive, and prosciutto, but many other fillings can be used.
The British Rail Class 373, known in France as the TGV TMST and branded by Eurostar as the Eurostar e300, is a French designed and Anglo-French built electric multiple unit train that was used for Eurostar international high-speed rail services from the United Kingdom to France and Belgium through the Channel Tunnel. Part of the TGV family, it was built with a smaller cross-section to fit the smaller loading gauge in Britain, was originally capable of operating on the UK third rail network, and has extensive fireproofing in case of fire in the tunnel. It is both the second longest—387 metres —and second fastest train in regular UK passenger service, operating at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour (186 mph).
A toast sandwich is a sandwich in which the filling between two slices of bread is itself a thin slice of toasted bread, which may be buttered. An 1861 recipe says to add salt and pepper to taste.
Travellers Fare was a company owned by British Rail that provided catering services on the rail network in Great Britain.
Princesses are Bulgarian open-faced baked sandwiches prepared with minced meat, often eaten for breakfast and sold as fast food. When prepared at home, princesses are usually bread-slice-sized and baked in an oven or an electric grill, but the fast-food version is longer, made from a whole bread that has been sliced through its longitude resulting in a loaf-sized sandwich that may or may not be baked on a charcoal barbecue grill. There may or may not be kashkaval on top of the sandwich and people often garnish a princess with mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard or ljutenica, depending on their taste.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)