Democracy Dies in Darkness

Would you eat this weird sandwich? Barry Enderwick would.

No matter how odd the ingredients, the California man prepares and eats a new sandwich each day, all for social media.

May 19, 2024 at 7:10 a.m. EDT
Barry Enderwick at home in his San Jose kitchen earlier this year. He makes a new sandwich every day for Sandwiches of History followers on social media. (Barry Enderwick )
6 min

Barry Enderwick’s idea of a gourmet sandwich as a kid was white bread with either fried bologna or peanut butter and a dill pickle.

In recent times, his sandwich makings have expanded, by a lot. Popcorn, sardines and parmesan? He’s on it. Ham and applesauce on pumpernickel? Yes, please. Raisin and cheese? Why not?

No ingredient is too obscure, no pairing is too odd for Enderwick. His fans can’t get enough.

Enderwick prepares and eats a different sandwich for lunch every day on his Sandwiches of History social accounts, where he collectively has about 700,000 followers.

In two years, he’s made and eaten more than 700 sandwiches he calls “historical” — made from recipes that are at least 20 years old, but often much older — in his quest to figure out if today’s taste buds can handle recipes from yesteryear. And also just to find yummy snacks.

“I love all aspects of food, from history to cooking to tasting,” said Enderwick, who has a day job in marketing. “It’s fascinating to try recipes of bygone eras when ingredients were less easy to come by.”

The genre of tasty vs. gross food has been popular for a while, including with TV shows such as Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern” or Netflix’s “Nailed It.” Enderwick’s take is relatable because Enderwick is just a regular guy in his regular-looking kitchen in San Jose, making videos with a camera on a tripod. Also, he seemingly will eat any food.

“Since my early 20s, I’ve been a curious person who cooks and eats anything just to try it,” he said.

His sandwich highlights have included a 1946 goblin sandwich (Brazil nuts, deviled ham, Worcestershire sauce and avocado, served in a doughnut) and a 1777 sandwich with just three ingredients: beef, butter and bread.

On a scale from 1-10, he gave the goblin sandwich a zero (ham and avocado in a doughnut tastes exactly as one might imagine), while beef and butter got a 7.5 — though it jumped to a 10 when he augmented it with his own additions of blue cheese, pepper and arugula.

“I’ve always enjoyed sandwiches — they’re quick, they’re portable and they’ve stood the test of time,” said Enderwick, 55.

Enderwick works bits of history into his videos. For example, his raisin and cheese sandwich, a recipe sent in by a reader from a history museum in Minnesota, was from the World War II era. It includes raisins, cottage cheese, mayo and peanut butter — but he points out that butter is absent, as it was rationed during the war.

A few sandwiches have pushed even Enderwick’s limits.

“The oyster sandwich recipe from 1909 was pretty awful,” he said. “Raw oysters, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil and a lettuce leaf. It was a disgusting, slimy mess.”

Also bad was the salmonburger tropicale.

“It’s made with salmon, American cheese and dill pickle relish,” he said. “On their own, those ingredients don’t sound bad. But the clash of flavors was terrible.”

Enderwick said he came up with the idea for Sandwiches of History in 2018 after a friend sent him an online copy of “The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book,” a 1909 cookbook with 400 recipes ranging from simple egg salad to tongue and tomato.

Enderwick took it as a kind of dare.

He was already reviewing potato chips online because he’d always loved odd chip flavors (wild onion and yogurt, scallop and garlic) and he figured sandwiches would be a good accompaniment, he said. Why not up the ante?

Enderwick slapped together a few historical sandwichesthe dairy sandwich (two slices of Swiss cheese held together with butter) and the Morocco sandwich of 1909 (olives, mayo, parmesan, butter) — for lunch and posted a video of him tasting them on social media. To his surprise, people liked it, and returned to see what he’d make next. Then he got the “1,001 Sandwiches” recipe book from 1936.

Soon, Enderwick was making more historical recipes and trying them, then sometimes modifying them to make them more palatable.

On TikTok, Enderwick updated a recipe for a Benedictine sandwich, adding smoked salmon and black pepper to the original ingredients of cream cheese, cucumber juice, onion juice, green food coloring and cayenne pepper.

“The original was not bad, but a little salty,” he said.

Because he makes historical sandwiches, a little history is in order: It is believed that sandwiches got their name in the 18th century, when Englishman John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, helped popularize them, and the name stuck.

And today, even soup can be a sandwich.

Enderwick made a recipe a woman sent him from Montreal for cream of mushroom soup sandwich. He said he found it surprisingly tasty.

“I’ve always been a fan of cream of mushroom soup, so to have it encased in bread that’s buttered and toasted was wonderful,” he said.

The worst sandwich he ever spit out came from a 1936 recipe, he said. It called for a compressed yeast cake and Worcestershire sauce between two slices of bread.

“At the time, people were eating fresh yeast left and right because they thought it was good for their health,” Enderwick said. “I honestly don’t know how they ate this sandwich. It’s really, really bad.”

Enderwick’s most delectable sandwiches include a French pan bagnat sandwich, a club sandwich filled with shrimp, and a tomato sandwich made famous by the Turkey and the Wolf restaurant in New Orleans.

“It’s mind-blowingly good,” he said. “Texas toast, Duke’s mayonnaise, slices of tomato and salt and pepper with way too much basil, way too much dill, sunflower seeds and a squirt of lemon. Delicious.”

The oldest recipe he made is a Chinese Rou Jia Mou sandwich that dates back to 200 B.C., he said.

“It originally developed along the Silk Road in China and was made with beef stuffed inside something similar to a griddle cake,” Enderwick said. “Today, they’re usually made with pork and they’re very tasty.”

While most sandwiches are savory, dessert can also be served between two slices of bread. The mayo and marshmallow sandwich comes to mind. He gave it a 6.5. Enderwick’s own favorite sweet creation is the chopped date and orange sandwich.

He has included many of his favorite (and not so favorite) recipes and their stories in his new book, “Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook,” which will be released by Harvard Common Press this fall.

But he said he is far from the end of his sandwich journey.

“One of the cookbooks I’ve collected has 1,000 fabulous sandwich recipes,” he said. “So I think I might be at this for a while.”

correction

A previous version of this article misstated the last name of Travel Channel show host Andrew Zimmern. The article has been corrected.