baffled

[deird1]

...do Americans not put butter on their sandwiches?

And why on earth not?

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

I don't.

Does that make me American?

Actually, to be fair, if I eat sandwiches at all I buy them, usually cheap sell-by date, ones.

Mostly because I only use garlic butter, but also because when I buy bread, it's in non-sliced loaves that I rip chunks off of.

Maybe I'm just weird.

Does THAT make me American?

;-)

kerk

[deird1]

...see, I'd always put butter on sandwiches unless it had something like pureed avocado, or cranberry sauce, or seeded mustard instead.

All these Americans were talking (with horror) about people making "peanut butter and butter sandwiches" - which does my head in, because butter is so much an automatic sandwich thing for me, that I'd never dream of listing it as an actual ingredient.

[lliira]

A peanut butter sandwich WITH BUTTER? Yeah, I'm horrified by that too.

[melannen]

I do, but then I'm weird.

I suspect it's because we usually put on either peanut butter or mayonnaise instead.

[deird1]

How odd...

[melannen]

I think it's a combination of economics, climate, and transport distances?

Butter goes liquid in normal summer temperatures in a lot of the US. You could use it in baking, etc., if you had a springhouse or icebox to keep it cool, it's not hot enough here that we switched to ghee, but it's not something you'd just have in arms' reach in the kitchen all the time without A/C and a fridge. And it melts and separates, and/or goes rancid, if shipped long distances unrefrigerated (and when the US was creating its cuisine, there were a lot of long distances, unrefrigerated.) Mayonnaise will also go rancid, but you can make it onsite out of oil and eggs, which have slightly longer shipping lifespans, even in the heat, so it was used in a lot of urban contexts where sandwiches got popular (delis and restaurants).

And peanut butter lasts forever at almost any temperature and was super, super cheap in the US for a long time (still is really). So if you just wanted something with a bit of protein and oil and creaminess on your bread, you'd use mayonnaise for savories and peanut butter for most of the rest. (sometimes soft cheese.)

Which is probably related to my vague perception that butter-based sandwiches are hoity-toity rich people fancy food....

[petzipellepingo]

Yes, I'd agree with that one.

[lliira]

Or mustard.

[fenchurch]

Nope, generally not. I'll put it on cucumber sandwiches or even tomato sandwiches, but that's because I had a Canadian friend when I was a teenager and she's the one who introduced me to those two types of sandwiches in the first place.

[deird1]

It's just totally automatic for me. I'd never even dreamed of not putting butter on sandwiches.

[shehasathree]

Bc they usually put something else on instead? I actually have no idea and am just guessing.

I grew up in a household where we didn't eat white bread and sandwiches never had butter on them (unless Dad was making those particular sandwiches with a very thin layer of butter and honey in top), and found it weird and gross the way the canteen (not that I was allowed to eat from there) and other anglo families made sandwiches.

It's impossible to disentangle what was my mother's personal 'taste' from what she thought was healthy/unhealthy/financially prudent, especially since she always just presented whatever she thought was healthy and right as a Truth. It took me until I was... In my twenties to realise that I actually quite enjoyed butter/etc on toast, under the right circumstances. (Just in time to be not-able to eat it, bc: food intolerances. Yaaaay.)

[deird1]

What One's Family Does is so often our idea of What The World Does, isn't it? Hence my assumption that everyone, ever, butters their sandwiches...

[rebcake]

Mayonnaise takes the place of butter on most sandwiches in the US of A. It's the same principle: moistens the bread, adds a bit of that good "mouth feel" thing you get from fats. Mayonnaise adds a subtle tanginess to the flavor. Some people decidedly hate it.

[deird1]

Totally weird to me. Mayo is something that only goes on sandwiches with lettuce...

[rebcake]

Well, yeah. What sandwiches are not getting lettuce in your neck of the woods? Besides peanut butter or grilled cheese, I mean? Meat sandwiches usually get lettuce, tomato, mayo, and perhaps cheese, mustard and sliced pickle, depending. There could be other things, too. Hot peppers! Bacon! Avocado!

Uh, this is not a good conversation for the middle of the night. *iz peckish now*

[zeborah]

Jam, honey, lemon honey.

I was going to say vegemite but I have actually heard of marmite and lettuce, so this sentence is mostly an excuse to giggle at the memory of a USan trying vegemite for the first time and spreading it thick on his bread like you would peanut butter.

Sandwiches with meat/salad-stuff were a minority of the sandwiches I ate when I was a kid.

[lycomingst]

When I was a teen I went to a friend's house and her mother put butter on sandwiches as a matter of course. I thought that was very odd, but then, I don't particularly like butter.

[deird1]

Totally a matter of course for me. I would have to have a very good reason not to use butter.

[vass]

Relatedly, did you know that in American English the L in "almond" isn't silent? They say "all-mond".

[deird1]

ALL MY ILLUSIONS ARE BEING SHATTERED. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS.

[velvetwhip]

I slather the bread in when I make grilled cheese. Does that count?

[deird1]

...kinda?

[redsixwing]

Most people put mayonnaise instead, which I find to be a loathsome habit.

I don't eat a lot of sandwiches. >.>

[deird1]

Eww...

[immer_am_lesen]

Do you actually put butter on, or marge? I always like the idea of buttering my bread/ toast, but the practicality of soft margarine means it wins out over butter that either needs softening first, or otherwise tears your bread to pieces.

PS- you've never heard 'ahmnd' pronounced 'allmnd' by Americans? And I thought you watched a lot of US telly shows. :)

[deird1]

Not ones where they eat almonds...

I buy "spreadable butter", or else leave the butter out on the bench to keep it soft. Don't really like the taste of margarine.

[elisi]

Well, this has been an eye-opening post/threads.

(Scandinavian/British here, so butter is a given.)

[beer_good_foamy]

Yeah. How the hell do you look at a smørrebrød and decide "nah, no need to put butter on it"?

[elisi]

LOL. THIS!

[(Anonymous)]

This is curiouswombat - since the great computer crash I have lost my DW password.

I am amazed, like you, at the idea of making sandwiches without butter!

And of lettuce as a default ingredient. I mean cheese and pickle with no butter and with lettuce? Or ham and pickle.

I don't put butter on bacon sandwiches though - just tomato sauce!

[beer_good_foamy]

Since the Swedish word for "sandwich" literally contains the word "butter" (and the USians have imported it, too - smörgåsbord) this is way too weird for me to wrap my head around.

[lliira]

My grandmother was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, and she never put butter on her sandwiches. I know butter was expensive in the U.S. during the Depression and WWII, but I thought it was expensive everywhere, and eggs weren't cheap then either. Though we did come up with mayo substitutes.

[beer_good_foamy]

People went without a lot of stuff during the depression; my grandfather never threw away anything for as long as I knew him. And for the most part, the Swedes who emigrated to the US were dirt poor to begin with.

Still doesn't change that the Swedish word for sandwich literally translates to "lump of butter", though. :)

[immer_am_lesen]

just like the German is 'butterbrot', so butterbread.
Without butter would make it...a bread, not a sandwich?

The English needing to name the 'invention' after an Earl though, that's just odd. :-p

[beer_good_foamy]

The English needing to name the 'invention' after an Earl though, that's just odd. :-p

Well, if you're going to claim to have invented something people have been eating since the invention of flour, you might as well go the whole way and give it your name too. :)

I wonder if anyone's copyrighted fire...?

[deird1]

If we start calling fire "beer", things are going to get confusing...

[beer_good_foamy]

Well, then you should have invented it first. Since I did, I get to name it. Tough. :P

(Pssst: Air is still up for grabs, and it sounds a lot like "Deird" already!)

[smurasaki]

Some do. My grandmother always did. Some use mayo or whatever the stuff that isn't mayo but is sort of like it is called. (I am blanking on the not-mayo stuff at the moment.) Others use mustard.

Assuming of course this is savory sandwiches we're talking about. I don't think I've ever seen a fellow American put anything but peanut butter and jelly on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It also occurs to me that I have no idea what a sandwich with butter would even taste like. (I have always used mustard.) ???

Laney thinks...

[(Anonymous)]

... is this why they have such trouble grasping the concept of vegemite? I didnt realise, when Hugh Jackman explained to Jimmy Fallon the need to butter one's toast before applying vegemite, that this was a strp that might otherwise be unknowingly skipped...