Ode to Bread-and-butter

No holiday, party and especially picnic can do without it. It is just indispensable when you are on a hike. Naturally with time it grows more and more complicated in form. There appear new vanguard models. Without any doubt it may be called the greatest invention of mankind. It is a common bread-and-butter.

The History of Bread-and-butter

On June, 18 bread-and-butter celebrated its 451st birthday. It should be mentioned that its father was Nicholas Copernic, a great medieval astronomer. And what is most interesting, he invented bread-and-butter out of medical purposes. When Copernic was young, he was the commandant of Allenstein Castle, that post had been given to him with the assistance of his uncle-canonic breaking all the rules, as Nicholas had no medical diploma. In several months the castle was besieged by the knights of Teutonic Order and some time later there burst out an epidemic of an unknown disease in the castle. Non-certificated specialist noticed that subjects to disease were only those who ate bread. Copernic found out that they often dropped their loaves of bread on the ground, then picked them up, shook off the sticked dust and … ate them! Naturally dust couldn’t be seen on the background of a dark loaf, so it occurred to Nicholas that they should spread something fair on loaves of bread so that it would be easy to notice mud on the bread. In that case it would be easy to dismiss the dust together with the spreading. As this “spreading” Copernic chose butter. The Teutons and diseases soon retreated, but the mankind got bread-and-butter. As for sandwich, it was invented by Lord Sandwich, an inveterate gambler, in order not to leave the card-table and not to stain the cards with greasy hands.

Types of Bread-and-butter

First the word “bread-and-butter” meant only those bread and butter constituting the dish. Nowadays the variety of bread-and-butters is virtually inexhaustible: besides butter people put everything that can be eaten on the loaf of bread, and sometimes in most astonishing combinations. According to the way of making all bread-and-butters can be divided into open, covered (sandwiches) and flaky ones.

Open bread-and-butter is cooked from a single loaf of bread with butter spread on it and with some spice. Sandwiches represent two loaves of bread with different meat and vegetable products put between them.

Flaky bread-and-butter consists of several loaves of bread put together with meat, chicken, cheese, boiled pork, puree and pate stuck between them.

Also bread-and-butters can be subdivided into:

- hot and cold bread-and-butters

- salty and sweet bread-and-butters

- cold salty bread-and-butters.

Cold bread-and-butters can be common, high-calorie, flaky, towers and pyramids, cocktails, snacks, rolls and cakes.

Bread-and-butter: Pros and Cons

We all know that we should get rid of the Soviet habit of eating sandwiches for breakfast. First of all, they are very dry, the stomach digests such food with much effort and it requires a long period of time. Secondly, the constituents of bread-and-butter are just carbohydrates, cholesterol. But if you have to live on sandwiches, you can try to eat them with some benefit, or at least, try to harm your stomach less. The first rule is that you should eat bread-and-butter alone, for mixing it with any other product or dish is not recommended. To make a sandwich or a bread-and-butter you should take coarse-ground rye bread. Try not to eat bread-and-butter with butter and cheese, as they consist only of pure cholesterol. And the principal rule: the simpler the sandwich is, the healthier it is. The ideal bread-and-butter represents a loaf of rye bread with a piece of boiled meat or tongue, containing much protein.

And still no other dish gives such a flight to your imagination and creative cooking. To eat something with pleasure you should first cook it with pleasure. The main things in cooking sandwiches are beauty and variety. And speaking generally, when cooking bread-and-butters, you should become a real artist just to diversify the palette.

The Ideal Bread-and-butter

British scientists from Leeds University worked out a mathematical formula of making an ideal toast, i.e. bread, fried in boiling oil. The specialists worked on this task for three months, their investigation cost 10,000 pounds (about $17,000). And they came to the following conclusion:

“To make a toast that the majority of people like, the bread should be fried in toaster with the temperature not less than 248, 00 F (120 C), but the butter should be taken from the refrigerator. It should be unequally spread on the loaf of bread for about two minutes. And the thickness of the layer of butter should be one seventeenth of that of the loaf of bread.”

Our formula is much simpler. In short it sounds like this:“The thicker the sausage, the better”.

How to Eat Bread-and-butter

Bread-and-butters and sandwiches are taken by hands if they are served with drinks before dinner. It is desirable that bread-and-butters should be rather small, so that they could be eaten in one-two takings, which is very convenient when you are standing. When the size of the sandwich is too big, or when you are treated to a multi-loaf club flaky bread-and-butter, it is much more convenient to eat it, sitting at the table, using a fork and a knife.

And We Only Dream about Bread-and-butter

To dream about a bread-and-butter means that you will meet a rival in the sphere of love. To cut a roll for bread-and-butters stands for economy, to cut rye bread — for some disappointment that you have to experience before you guarantee yourself wealth up to the end of your life. When you buy sandwiches, it means that your salary will be raised. Eating a sandwich predicts success in business. Bread-and-butter with sausage means that you will be successful in everything and will enjoy constant attention and care both in your family and in your company. Cheese bread-and-butter stands for disappointment and sadness, fish bread-and-butter means that you will gain success thanks to your enterprise, bread-and-butter with boiled pork predicts satisfaction of some desire. A dream where you eat a sandwich with a thick layer of caviar is very auspicious, as after this dream wealth will fall on you as if from cornucopia. There is even a method of fortune-telling where the main means is a bread-and-butter. Spread some jam on one side of a loaf of bread and mustard on the other and let this bread-and-butter fall down from some height. If in the end it appears to lie with jam side up, it means that the coming year will be very successful for you, if with mustard side up — dry crusts beforehand as you will have to tighten your waist-band.

Some Interesting “Bread-and-butter” Facts

On November 1, 2003 the longest bread-and-butter with red caviar was created. It happened on Moscow fair Concovo and its length was 10 meters and 12, 5 centimeters.

In British county Cheshire an enormous sandwich with the weight of two tons was cooked. Its length was about 2, 5 meters, each loaf of bread 15 centimeters thick, which is equal to 1,000 common rolls of bread. The fitting consisted of tunny, cucumbers and mayonnaise.