The idea that we should classify food by shape is clearly erroneous. Our food classifications should be based on method of eating, not by shape! A sandwich is any food that uses a carbohydrate to protect your hands from a messier food, so that you can eat it at a card table without getting your hands dirty (a la the origin myth). Let's go through the things here:
Pizza: Yes
Sushi: Mostly no (the carbs don't protect you from the insides, the seaweed does)
Pumpkin pie: No (unless eaten with hands, without falling apart)
Quesadilla: Yes
Toast sandwich: No (inside is not messier)
Victoria sponge: No (eaten with fork)
Hot dog: Yes
Sub sandwich: Yes
Slice of pie: No (unless eaten with hands)
Falafel wrap: Yes
Pigs in a blanket: Yes
Enchilada: No (the one pictured has cheese and sauce on the outside)
Quiche: No (unless eaten with hands)
Cheesecake: No (unless eaten with hands)
Soup bowl: No (I'd love to see you try)
Falafel pita: Yes
Deep dish pizza: If eaten with hands
Salad in a bread bowl: No
Key lime pie: No (unless eaten with hands)
Calzone: Yes
Corn dog: No (if held with stick)
Pie (whole): No (good luck)
Dumplings: Yes (unless they have sauce on them)
Pop tarts: Yes
Uncrustables: Yes
This is the best and most accurate method that actually provides a strict definition that lines up with my intuitions—the cube rule is fun, but you're really gonna claim that a subway sandwich isn't a sandwich?
>A sandwich is any food that uses a carbohydrate to protect your hands from a messier food, so that you can eat it at a card table without getting your hands dirty (a la the origin myth).
>In the US, a court in Boston, Massachusetts, ruled in 2006 that a sandwich includes at least two slices of bread[1] and "under this definition, this court finds that the term 'sandwich' is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos, and quesadillas,
I don't think the suggestion was that the US court system's definition is supreme. I think the requirement of bread or at something starchy matches most people's intuitions for the definition of "sandwich." Is an apple (eaten whole, with your hands) a sandwich, given that apple peel contains carbohydrates?
Pie has somewhat different meanings in different countries.
In the US pie refers almost exclusively to a desert, some sweet concoction with pastry uon one side (bottom or top) usually served as a slice of a larger pie.
In the commonwealth (UK et al) pies are more likely to be savory with pastry on all sides. Sometimes baked large, and served as a slice, (pastry on top) but that's not as common.
A "real" pie would be consumed by hand - think cornish pasties, pork pies and so on. Some supermarket / gas station pies would have very thin pastry and need a container for structure, but that's more a quality /cheapness issue than a naming problem.
Of course pie, like sandwich or salad is not a definitive term. Food terms almost never are. Taxation attempts to rigoursly categories but ultimately fails, having to arbitrarily group more precise terms together.
Just about every generic food description has this vagueness leading to this same "argument" over and over. What is "bread"?
In the US pie refers almost exclusively to a desert [...]
But you see people in the US refer to pizza as a pie all the time, which considering the overall frequency (pizza seems more popular than other/actual pie, at least online) would argue against that.
As a Scandi, a sandwich is a double sandwich (since a sandwich is open-face by default). Complicated.
> Our food classifications should be based on method of eating, not by shape!
I agree Euclidean geometry isn’t the key to proper classification of sandwich systems.
Rather we need to look towards physics and emergence. Sandwich emergence is the law or phenomenon that which occurs at sandwich scales (in space or time) but not at ingredients scales, despite the fact that a sandwich system can be viewed as a very large ensemble of ingredient systems.
Have you seen the kind of "pie" they sell at McDonald's? Seems to qualify on either criteria. I've never eaten one, but it's on my mind because someone abandoned a box of K-cups at work that are branded "McCafe" and claim to contain "baked apple pie".
A turnover could also be considered a pie and a sandwich simultaneously. Unless you eat it with utensils.
>Dumplings
What is a dumpling to you? My definition has no filling, as in "chicken and dumplings", and is eaten with utensils.
>Soup bowl: No (I'd love to see you try)
There is a semi-fast food chain that has, or used to have "bread bowls" where they take a round loaf of bread, remove the inside, and serve soup in it. What about that?
If you rule out anything eaten with a fork, you immediately rule out open-faced sandwiches, which as far as I know, are universally referred to as open-faced sandwiches. You can pry my open-faced tuna melt on rye out of my cold dead hands.
If you commit yourself to the carbohydrate as a protector from mess, is a messy sandwich still a sandwich? What about cucumber sandwiches (not messy on the inside)?
You say a pie isn't a sandwich, but a small pie can be eaten by hand quite easily. How can the difference be just the size? What if I, with my large hands, can comfortably palm the pie and eat it like an Uncrustable, but my wife can't? Conditional sandwich? Isn't an uncrustable just a small pie.
saying an open faced sandwich is a sandwich is like saying pluto is a planet because it is a dwarf planet- wrong side of history bucko, it ceases to be a sandwich if it is to be eaten by a fork
> if I can comfortably palm the pie and eat it like an Uncrustable, but my wife can't?
if you eat something like a sandwich, then it is a sandwich to you, and if it is meant to be eaten like a sandwich, then it is a sandwich in general.
Open-faced sandwiches are sandwiches that have been transformed. You can (in theory) refold an open-faced sandwich back into a sandwich. Just like if you split the bottom of a cupcake in half and make a sandwich[1], you still are eating a cupcake.
The pie thing is probably just a question of what kind of pie you are thinking of. Some pies are trivially to eat neatly in the hand, others are basically impossible (e.g. a cream-pie with a cookie-crumb crust).
Also, I am completely incapable of eating an in-n-out burger at a card-table without getting very messy, but my wife can eat one with a single hand while driving and not spill a single drop of spread. It seems clear that the purpose of the bun is to prevent you from getting the messier inner ingredients on your hand, so I'm okay calling it a sandwich.
>You can pry my open-faced tuna melt on rye out of my cold dead hands.
You mean pry the plate that it is on? If it were actually in your hands, you'd have a stronger case for calling it a sandwich. The mere fact it's not actually in your hands weakens your case. At least by these definitions. IANAL though ;P
...you eat open faced sandwiches with a fork and knife? I usually eat them like a pizza. But yes, if you eat it with a fork and a knife, it's not a sandwich.
A messy sandwich ceases to be a sandwich as soon as it is no longer possible to eat it without your hands getting significantly less messy than if the bread weren't there. Surely no one would agree that blending a sandwich preserves its sandwichness.
A small pie is a sandwich. A large pie is not. Yes, this depends on the person; I am fine with that.
> you immediately rule out open-faced sandwiches, which as far as I know, are universally referred to as open-faced sandwiches.
I mean, the whole reason they're called "open-faced sandwiches" is to distinguish them from, you know, sandwiches, because sandwiches aren't open-faced.
What is makizushi? Is that some local variant of maki? Traditional maki (with seaweed on the outside) seems to be sushi indeed. California rolls though (inverted maki, rice on the outside) are arguably salads.
If it's so messy that you can't pick it up and eat it by the bread, it's not a sandwich—it's just some turkey on a plate with a soggy crouton beneath it.
Pizza: Yes
Sushi: Mostly no (the carbs don't protect you from the insides, the seaweed does)
Pumpkin pie: No (unless eaten with hands, without falling apart)
Quesadilla: Yes
Toast sandwich: No (inside is not messier)
Victoria sponge: No (eaten with fork)
Hot dog: Yes
Sub sandwich: Yes
Slice of pie: No (unless eaten with hands)
Falafel wrap: Yes
Pigs in a blanket: Yes
Enchilada: No (the one pictured has cheese and sauce on the outside)
Quiche: No (unless eaten with hands)
Cheesecake: No (unless eaten with hands)
Soup bowl: No (I'd love to see you try)
Falafel pita: Yes
Deep dish pizza: If eaten with hands
Salad in a bread bowl: No
Key lime pie: No (unless eaten with hands)
Calzone: Yes
Corn dog: No (if held with stick)
Pie (whole): No (good luck)
Dumplings: Yes (unless they have sauce on them)
Pop tarts: Yes
Uncrustables: Yes
This is the best and most accurate method that actually provides a strict definition that lines up with my intuitions—the cube rule is fun, but you're really gonna claim that a subway sandwich isn't a sandwich?