History of the Italian sandwich

Michael the Great's Notepad

In the 1950s, emigration from south to north in Italy during the economic boom had created a mass of depopulated people, without housing or families. Bread, which the farmers barely knew from eating polenta every day, was the essential resource in the city, and it had to be accompanied with anything, usually with an onion bulb or if, if you were lucky, with the butcher's slice of mortadella. This primary identity of the sandwich coexisted with a second, purely occasional identity: in wealthy families bread, butter and jam for the children; and, for a picnic, in the bag not a sandwich but a sandwich. Legend or history, the birth in Europe of a sandwich with luxury ingredients bears the name of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). An inveterate gambler, he had it prepared and served at the table during his endless card games. This sandwich – two slices of bread without crust and cold meat and cheese in the middle – called "sandwich", had become so widespread that it was soon welcomed by the restaurants of luxury hotels to be bitten by wealthy and voracious customers.

As Alberto Cappati recounts in his entertaining and learned "History of the Italian sandwich" (Slow Food Editore, 2024), in the rich bourgeoisie and noble conviviality of the nineteenth century, sandwiches with fine condiments figured mainly in buffets and in the tea ritual. While the diminutive of bread had its own carefree and childish aura, and was well known to the readers of "Pinocchio" in which, for breakfast, "the Fairy had prepared two hundred cups of coffee and milk and four hundred buttered rolls on the bottom and top ”. And then, to characterize the consumer class, there was the shape of the bread: whole, with the crust, it belonged to the people, without crust it belonged to the bourgeois; vertically cut (cassette) was elegant, horizontally cut popular.

The objective of those who, in the 1930s, wanted to make the sandwich Italian would be to change its name and adapt the filling. These were years in which relations between England and fascist Italy were difficult, and Italian bread had to demonstrate its gastronomic value. So in “Futurist Cuisine” (1932) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the poet-painter Fillìa (pseudonym of Luigi Colombo) propose replacing the term sandwich with “traidue”: “Two rectangular slices of bread: a spread of anchovies, the other of chopped apple peel paste. Between the two slices of bread, cooked salami". Later the "traidue" will be renamed "tramezzino" by Gabriele D'Annunzio, as attested by the "Modern Dictionary" by Alfredo Panzini published by Hoepli in 1935.

Forty years later, in 1976, the Corriere della Sera recorded the neologism "paninaro", which designated the frequenters of a Milanese restaurant in Piazzetta Liberty, "Al Panino". In the years between the kidnapping of Aldo Moro and the Milano da bere, they represented a youthful avant-garde (or rearguard) who combined the sandwich with Armani jeans, Best Company sweatshirts, El Charro belts, Moncler jackets, Timberland boots. They ate hamburgers, listened to Duran Duran and invented an unprecedented and daring language, which spread throughout the country thanks, in 1980, to a monthly periodical available on newsstands, “Paninaro. Comics, current affairs, fashion, customs”; and thanks, in 1983, to the television show “Drive In” with the comedian Enzo Braschi.

Since the second half of the Seventies, the sandwich has occupied a growing place in distribution, consumption and "on the go and quick" eating. Since the gangs of young people gather in the centre, in the clothing store districts, the phenomenon takes on not so much political but social and economic characteristics. The term paninaro represents, in the eyes of those who knew San Babila and Sansabilini at that time, the fascist right as opposed to the "Chinese" in eskimo, the indifferent reaction of the father's sons to the old extra-parliamentary left, the re-appropriation of the proletarian symbol par excellence -bread- possibly replaced with an elegant toast or a feminine canapé.

Later the sandwich will have to compete with the McDonald's hamburger. The latter expresses, with a bread without native roots, with unidentifiable but tasty minced meat, the emergence of globalization in the food market. The paninari, observes Capatti, instead have the merit of having placed the sandwich among the consumer "objects" with an Italian cultural brand, and of having contributed to establishing a typology of places and young consumers. Two irreconcilable worlds? Not really if you think of the sandwiches prepared by Gualtiero Marchesi in his parents' restaurant, near the Milanese general markets: the Grattacielo, layered, the Smilzo, lightly buttered with tuna belly, the Curvo, based on raw beef , and the Gobbo with dried fruit, lined with lettuce.

That's not all, because the great chef will give McDonald's two of his creations with musical names, Vivace and Adagio. The first with spinach, bacon and beef. The second with an aubergine, ricotta and meat mousse. At the same time, traditional offerings, mainly industrial focaccias and piadinas, are proliferating. Bruschetti and piadinerias will follow. Hot dogs will have little luck, while the crêpes distributed in Paris at pavement box offices will not make their appearance on the streets of our cities. Instead, kebabs will establish themselves by virtue of low-cost immigrant labor.

Enjoy your meal.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/storia-del-panino-italiano/ on Sat, 11 Jan 2025 05:31:27 +0000.