A toast sandwich is exactly what it sounds like: a thin slice of toasted bread, placed between two slices of untoasted bread. Season with salt and pepper. The recipe appears in Isabella Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management, in the section for invalid cookery. Beeton suggests the sandwich "may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid."
In 2011, the Royal Society of Chemistry revived the recipe, calculated the cost at 7.5 pence per sandwich, and named it "the country's most economical lunch." They offered £200 to anyone who could create a cheaper edible meal. Due to an overabundance of submissions, they closed the offer after seven days. NPR's Peter Sagal tried one on Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! and called it "the culinary equivalent of a Rothko painting. Or it's like a sandwich by Marcel Duchamp! It questions the essence of sandwich and language both!" The A.V. Club's Mike Vago was more direct, calling it "an extravagance of blandness."
Heston Blumenthal serves a version at his three-Michelin-starred restaurant the Fat Duck, though his involves bone marrow salad, egg yolk, mustard, gastrique, mayonnaise, and tomato ketchup — which may somewhat defeat the purpose.
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