Is a Taco (or a Quesadilla) a Sandwich?
Leena Trivedi-Grenier (one of the wonderful graduates of the Le Cordon Bleu Graduate Program in Gastronomy run by University of Adelaide and author of a lively blog), wrote to ask my opinion.
No, was my answer. In Mexico neither a taco nor a quesadilla would ever be considered a sandwich.
A sandwich is–guess what?–a sandwich. That’s the word in Mexican Spanish, and, in my experience, in most of the rest of the Spanish speaking world. Sandwiches are as Mexican as mariachis and chiles.
In Mexico two slices of soft white bread (surprise) form the basis of a sandwich.
(As an aside, not for nothing is Bimbo which really promoted pan de caja (bread from a bread tin, square bread) in Mexico one of the biggest bakers in the world. It’s a very interesting company run by a very interesting family by the way. And it’s probably selling bread near you almost wherever you may be).
These slices of bread are glued together with mayonaise or crema (roughly creme fraiche), filled with ham or tuna or other meaty things, plus perhaps lettuce, tomato, avocado etc as veg. They are widely available and widely eaten. Luxury bus lines hand them out to passengers (though I would not vouch for their freshness). Mothers use them as an after-school snack.
The other major filled bready thing is a torta, that is a crusty roll (bolillo), usually filled with some flamboyant combination of refried beans, meats, avocado, lettuce, tomato, chile, and various meats. Even sometimes a tamal.
Of course, if you just want to define sandwich broadly as some flattish starch enclosing meats, vegetables etc, then I suppose you could call tacos and quesadillas sandwiches.
- How to grind maize for tortillas on a metate (simple grindstone)
- It’s Official: Hawaii has a Regional Cuisine
You might be interested to know that a similar question was raised about burritos in a lawsuit in Massachusetts two years ago. The state ruled that a burrito is not, in fact, a sandwich.
Here’s a blog entry about how that came about: http://nrnfoodwriter.blogspot.com/2006/11/dont-mess-with-jeff-ackerman_06.html
And the actual case is posted in the comments to this blog entry, if you’re really curious: http://nrnfoodwriter.blogspot.com/2006/11/is-plagiarism-sincerest-form-of.html
Sandwich no, but are they pies?
Very interesting Bret. What a world. And you and Adam prompt me to think of a little essay on classification of dishes. Not mind-numbing, I think, but enlightening.
It would be useful to be able to define the differences/similarities of pizza, calzone, empanada and quesadilla I imagine.
Today I’ve been having huge problems with email so I am all behind. But I want to get to classification in the next couple of days.
Classifying what constitutes ‘sandwich’, etc… Yes, very interesting. And quite anthropological – is, for example, an egyptian bean dish – Ful Mudammas – that is often put into a pita pouch and eaten, to be considered a ‘sandwich’? And , by whose (cultural) categories? In some countries it might be considered a sandwich, but that culinary category does not exist in Egypt – at least, not until very recently.
If I dip bread into my soup (or, less ludicrously, my stew); does that mean I’m eating a soup or stew sandwich?
Just for fun…
Saludos,
Mike