In a modern world with an abundance of information and a lack of nuance, many questions are left unresolved – washed away by an inundation of new stimuli.
Like all scions of nature, we humans are inclined to the path of least resistance. This can be identified in our aversion to certain questions. Certain hard questions. Certain arguably impossible questions: What is the meaning of life? Why did school start before Labor Day this year? Who put that camera in that bathroom last year? Why didn’t we get a snow day on January 16th when Mr. Stellato promised one?
But the most pertinent unanswered question is how we as a species should classify the hot dog – is the hot dog a sandwich? Or another object altogether?
To seek an answer to this question, I decided to consult Friends Academy’s resident sandwich expert, none other than the Science Department’s Jeffery Burt.
“When I think of a menu” he said, gesticulating a chart, “I think of a hotdog as going under the grilled item section, not sandwich.”
This led us down a rabbit hole.
“I also don’t classify a burger as a sandwich,” a controversial take from the J. Burt himself, “it goes under the grilled item section…Burgers under the grilled item section are specifically made with a ground beef patty.”
This implies that a Filet-o-Fish burger is only a burger in name.
“Grilled cheeses go under the sandwich group though,” Burt clarified. At this point, Vijay hit the dunk off the alley-oop adding, “Grilled cheeses are technically cheese melts” thus cementing the notion that a grilled cheese should be placed under the sandwich section.”
The discussion ranged over a large variety of food items. The following graph demonstrates where each item was placed:
The fundamental takeaway from this discussion is not that a hotdog is not a sandwich, and that a sandwich is not a food preparation method, but rather that a sandwich is an archetype of food – like steak or seafood. Sandwiches thus are singular as a classification of food with an unlimited amount of ingredient combinations possible.
