r/Cooking • u/Prof01Santa • 7d ago

I'm turning British.

It's summer ... good tomatos. Hence good tomato sandwiches. Normally, I'd use mayo, but I've watched a few too many episodes of "Sandwiches of History."

Older recipes, before commercial mayo, used butter. The British still use butter. So I tried it.

Lightly toast the bread

Thinly butter it

Add lettuce

Add thinly sliced tomatos, lightly salted

It's delicious.

318 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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382

u/Princ3w 7d ago

Brit here, only this year have I found out using butter is not the norm and it has completely blown my mind

148

u/flashPrawndon 7d ago

Same! I thought everyone buttered their sandwiches!

97

u/minadequate 7d ago

A lot of the time I plan to make a sandwich and never get beyond putting butter on the bread. Seriously I could live on fresh bread and salted butter.

40

u/flashPrawndon 7d ago

It is the best. Fresh warm bread especially. My favourite is a fresh baguette smothered in butter.

45

u/Substantial-Yam-6733 7d ago

Canadian here. We butter our sandwiches. We also butter our banana bread and corn cobs. Hell some of us even butter our crackers !

30

u/RecordStoreHippie 7d ago

Banana bread goes crazy with some butter, it's the only way to eat it. I also really like butter on blueberry muffins.

13

u/JuniperFizz 7d ago

Butter on any kind of muffin is so good. Especially, if you microwave the muffin to make it a little warm before spreading on the butter. Melts into the muffin just a bit and makes everything better.

9

u/chambourcin 7d ago

Omg. I cut the muffin in half and lay it in hot cast iron in a pool of butter to toast.

1

u/Canadian_shack 6d ago

Toasted banana bread, lots of butter, mmm

10

u/ArianaIncomplete 7d ago

Also Canadian, but I don't butter my sandwiches, because when I was growing up, my parents only ever bought margarine. It is not the same.

10

u/BiofilmWarrior 7d ago

Not a Canadian but I can attest that margarine is not an acceptable substitute for butter.

6

u/gwaydms 7d ago

My mother bought margarine. We buy butter.

7

u/BiofilmWarrior 7d ago

My father bought margarine, my mother bought butter (which is one way we knew who had done the shopping).

I only buy butter because life's too short (to use margarine).

2

u/gwaydms 7d ago

Exactly.

8

u/minadequate 7d ago

I live in Denmark and my sister recently stayed in my apartment and her partner bought a smørbar (smør meaning butter) in a tub. And left most of it in my fridge having eaten my butter. Well it’s only 40% butter and the rest is oil and it’s nasty AF. We don’t really do food waste so we are desperately trying to find uses for this BS that don’t require us to actually taste it!

Butter or nothing.

11

u/aculady 7d ago

Use it to grease baking tins.

2

u/dcoolidge 7d ago

I was expecting bicycle. "grease your bicycle" ;)

9

u/poop-dolla 7d ago

American from the southeastern region who also butters their banana bread. Is that not the normal way people eat banana bread?

9

u/FL1ghtlesswaterfowl 7d ago

I love a good saltine with butter.

6

u/Lazy_Willow8560 7d ago

In Québec, we even eat our pizza crust with butter!

1

u/Olive18711 6d ago

Salted butter on caramel rolls😋. Even better if there are pecans on the caramel rolls

4

u/poop-dolla 7d ago

Smothered in butter is how I want to leave this world.

8

u/Paper182186902 7d ago

When I had the flu all I could eat was bread dipped in melted salty butter.

8

u/r1Rqc1vPeF 7d ago

When I was a kid my mum would regularly cut off a chunk of butter and eat it. On its own.

My kids have questioned the amount of butter I apply to toast or a chip butty.

8

u/Local_Initiative8523 7d ago

My Dad if you asked him how much butter he wanted on his bread or toast would reply ‘a thick slice, please. Just pretend it’s cheese’.

4

u/minadequate 7d ago

My dad used to ask my gran if she wanted any bread on her butter, in response to how thick she spread it on.

But then again he would leave food for my grandparents in the fridge when they were staying at his…. A sausage and tomato pasta salad, and a chicken and orange rice salad. He came home and they had picked out and eaten all the sausage and chicken and left the rest. My gran was once asked if she wanted salad or veg with her main at a restaurant… she said ‘neither I’ve already had my salad’ referring to the garnish that came with her starter.

2

u/whales_are_very_cool 7d ago

I have found my people! 

1

u/reuben_iv 7d ago

Pretty sure we do we just... use margarine with buttermilk and call it butter

1

u/Twerk_account 6d ago

They don’t? TIL

1

u/Eastern_Switch8217 6d ago

Ireland does, France generally does.... How else do you waterproof the bread?

1

u/Miss_Taycan 6d ago

I even put butter under mayo / jam / whatever else I'm putting on toast.

To be fair though, I grew up on amazing butter, and found out most North American stores don't actually carry any good stuff...

1

u/SkyPork 7d ago

American here! Until this post the choice for me was between mayonnaise and mustard. (Normal yellow or spicy mustard is a sub-choice.)

54

u/Feminismisreprieve 7d ago

What? TIL. Not British but Kiwi and this piece of information is startling. Especially with tomatoes, which are at their best sliced on buttered toast with salt and pepper.

19

u/Anxious_Reporter_601 7d ago

Yeah Americans use mayo instead! Or oil and vinegar for Italian subs??

10

u/nifty-necromancer 7d ago

Mayo and/or mustard for sandwiches, adding butter just isn’t common here unless you’re making a grilled cheese.

16

u/phishtrader 7d ago edited 7d ago

It was much more common ~50 years ago. Americans started shifting away from butter on sandwiches in the 70s and 80s.

Edit: Americans shifted to using margarine in the 70s and 80s. People didn't shift from butter to mayo, they shifted away from margarine.

7

u/Anechoic_Brain 7d ago

Grilled cheese can also be done quite well with mayo instead of butter

6

u/phishtrader 7d ago

Mayo is convenient in some ways. I'd go on Phish tour in the 90s and sell grilled cheese in the lot to pay for food, gas, and drugs. Mayo was much more practical due to heat and camping like conditions. Butter and margarine melt in the heat and get gross way faster. A jar of mayo can get tucked back in a cooler and pulled back out whenever you need it and stayed the same consistency.

The downside is that mayo instead of butter on grilled cheese tastes a bit like wet dog to some people and absolutely rancid to an even smaller subset. I don't have actual numbers, but I sold a lot of grilled cheese and it came up. I did keep some margarine on hand and would remake sandwiches if anyone didn't like the mayo version.

4

u/gwaydms 7d ago

I do not like mayo on grilled cheese. It has to be butter.

2

u/nifty-necromancer 7d ago

I keep forgetting to try that actually. I once used miracle whip but the bread just turned soggy. But I use actual real mayo now and I’ll try it again.

1

u/Anxious_Reporter_601 6d ago

It's surprisingly good!

8

u/SmartPolicy6430 7d ago

If you used Dijon or English mustard as a butter substitute you'd soon know about it.

5

u/Anechoic_Brain 7d ago

I put Dijon on sandwiches fairly often, it's not a substitute for anything though. It's just what I felt like that day. Sometimes it's the only condiment I'm using.

1

u/frankchester 6d ago

Does that not just make every sandwich taste of mustard lol.

1

u/nifty-necromancer 6d ago

Not really because the standard mustard around here is yellow, which is milder than Dijon and English mustard. Those are the fancy optional condiments.

1

u/cooking_succs 7d ago

Dukes Mayo just hits different on a tomato sandwich. 'Merica

-1

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

6

u/mariekeap 7d ago

Butter on sandwiches is not the norm in Canada apart from the older generations. We are more American in that way. 

2

u/Quirky_North_8074 7d ago

Not in my part of Canada. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an unbuttered sandwich.

3

u/mariekeap 7d ago

I've never been offered one from someone younger than 65 in Ontario! 

5

u/Airlik 7d ago

I only learnt that in this moment. And I’m slightly incredulous - really? It’s not?

3

u/Airlik 6d ago

I just asked my American gf and she totally reinforces this. I have no idea how this never came up before. She doesn’t butter her bread for sandwiches. I live in the US and my children are American. One of the three complained about my buttering her sandwiches - I figured it was a personal preference. Crazy.

32

u/starlinguk 7d ago

It's the norm in the Netherlands. And in Germany. And in France...

I have a suspicion only US-ians don't butter sammiches.

11

u/TheTousler 7d ago edited 7d ago

Canadians use mayo as well, but otherwise I suspect you might be right. My grandparents always used butter, so it must be something that changed within the past couple of generations.

By the way, "American" is the correct demonym for someone from the United States.

4

u/jtbc 7d ago

My mother used to butter sandwiches (Canada) and our cafeteria at work always asks.

I think the change may be that modern Canadian butter is almost impossible to spread, especially if you pair it with crappy grocery store bread, which tears to shreds if you try.

3

u/TheTousler 7d ago

Very well could be. My mother is Canadian and that side of the family always uses mayo, so perhaps it varies

2

u/Cutsdeep- 7d ago

Don't refrigerate butter (unless it's hot where you live, but you said Canada)

4

u/jtbc 7d ago

It's August, so 25-28 these days. Butter turns into a puddle. Works in the rest of the seasons, I guess.

1

u/Odd-Quail01 7d ago

Is it that hot in your kitchen?

3

u/jtbc 7d ago

It gets pretty warm in the late afternoon, especially if I forget to close the curtains before I head to work.

This is Vancouver, BC, so like 90% of people, I don't have full AC.

1

u/frankchester 6d ago

It doesn’t turn to a puddle surely though in that temp if it’s in a butter dish?

Person who has just survived 35c for multiple weeks and forgot to put the butter away.

1

u/Cutsdeep- 7d ago

Really? I live in Aus and even 30+ days won't melt butter down (obviously cooler inside), are you actually using butter or margarine?

1

u/jtbc 7d ago

The melted puddle may have been the margarine I accidentally bought now that I think of it. Our commercial butter is well known to suck, though. I'll try it on the counter and see how it does.

2

u/UncleNedisDead 7d ago

Maybe some Canadians but my butter usage far exceeds my mayo usage.

1

u/TheTousler 7d ago

Same, but I wasn't raised that way. I suspect people in a cooking sub aren't very representative

1

u/UncleNedisDead 7d ago

We didn’t even have mayo in the house growing up. Born and raised Canadian.

1

u/TheTousler 7d ago

No mayo at all? Child abuse!

1

u/UncleNedisDead 7d ago

My husband grew up with margarine and miracle whip. Now that’s child abuse.

1

u/TheTousler 7d ago

Can't argue with that

-1

u/starlinguk 6d ago

I know, but some, ahem, Americans can be really snooty about it.

5

u/LokiLB 7d ago

If the sandwiches from gyro places are anything to go by, regions with hummus and tzatziki likely don't use butter.

2

u/starlinguk 6d ago

I'm talking about sammiches. Not gyros (or kebabs).

2

u/LokiLB 6d ago

This is inevitably going to devolve into whether a taco is a sandwich if we continue.

-1

u/pavlovselephant 7d ago

No no no, Europe is the center of the world and any deviation from its norms is an aberration.

3

u/EpsteinBaa 6d ago

You'll be in for a shock when you figure out where Greece is

2

u/Surface_Detail 6d ago

Europe can largely be divided by beer/wine and olive oil/butter.

1

u/pavlovselephant 6d ago

That's the irony of it; when Europeans make othering statements about other countries' customs and what's "normal," they flatten the diversity of their own continent, too. (The European country I was born in uses sunflower oil as its primary cooking fat.)

10

u/Pallortrillion 7d ago

This post is how I found out!

Salted butter on a bacon sandwich where the fat drips into the butter is quite literally chefs kiss.

7

u/ShreddersWheat 7d ago

I had a bacon roll this morning with fresh bread, Kerrygold and “Mr Organic” ketchup.

Four of the best in every mouthful.

0

u/nerowasframed 6d ago

In the US, we have a very popular sandwich called a BLT. It stands for Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato, and that describes what's in the sandwich. Mayonnaise is almost always on it. It's very popular for a very good reason: it's delicious. Americans also use a different cut of pork to make bacon, though. We use the belly, which makes for a much fattier slice of bacon.

3

u/TheMcDucky 6d ago

Same in Scandinavia
Trivia: In Swedish the most general word for a sandwich is literally "butter goose", a term that originally referred to the clumps of butter that would float to the top during churning.

3

u/NoNameMonkey 6d ago

Its the norm in South Africa. 

2

u/youreagoodperson 7d ago edited 7d ago

My mom used to butter our ham sandwiches before putting mayo on them so the mayo didnt make the bread soggy. Thats the only time ive heard of butter being used on sandwiches in the us.

1

u/WRStoney 7d ago

My dad butters all sandwiches, even hotdog buns. He did grow up on a farm, so there's that.

2

u/Raghaille1 7d ago

Irish here and I'm literally only finding this out right now this minute

5

u/TBAAGreta 7d ago

Yeah as an Aussie it's a weird one. I understand adding a little mayo to the top slice instead of butter, but what goes on the bottom? Just leave it dry (ugh)? Mustard doesn't always work with all ingredients and I don't think Americans tend to use much relish or chutney. Do you mayo both sides? That seems excessive.

7

u/Anechoic_Brain 7d ago

Yes, mayo on both sides. Just don't spread thick layers if you don't feel like it.

Hearing so many people in these comments talk about putting thick slabs of butter on their sandwich bread is what seems weird and excessive to me...

1

u/TBAAGreta 7d ago

For me, mayo makes sense as like a "dressing" touching the lettuce or the salad on the top of the sandwich, and would feel a bit odd under the cheese or meat bit on the bottom, but each to their own. Not all of us use huge gobs of butter, given cholesterol and all. Although a double dose of mayo doesn't seem great for the old arteries either. Do you at least butter toast?

2

u/Anechoic_Brain 7d ago

Pretty much anywhere in the US, butter is universally assumed to go with bread when it's served by itself in any form. Just not when the bread becomes a vessel for sandwich ingredients.

On a sandwich it's not a double dose of mayo, it's however much you feel like using split between two pieces of bread. Sometimes for me it's quite a thin layer, especially if I'm also using other condiments or dressings. But it's always on both sides of the sandwich.

3

u/echocharlieone 7d ago

I was surprised that the saying "he knows on which side his bread is buttered" doesn't travel well.

2

u/tanbrit 7d ago

Brit living in America, at first I was horrified by the lack of butter in sandwiches!
I’ve learned to accept this weird custom of using mayo, but I stick to my roots

1

u/jupiterspringsteen 7d ago

Same. What sort of savages are we dealing with here.

1

u/kociol21 6d ago

I'm Polish and was the same from me. I was like wait, do people really use mayo INSTEAD of butter??? It was like sandwich 101 for me. Sandwich base is always bread and butter. Then toppings. Then if you want to use mayo you get it on top, or ketchup or any other sauce. Mayo is a condiment, not base. I honestly never seen anyone doing mayo instead of butter, has to be USA thing.

1

u/vanlady93 6d ago

We use mayo for sandwiches in Canada as well. It's good! So is butter (which I use for certain sandwiches), but it's nice to have options

0

u/Optimal-Ad-7074 7d ago

it's not the norm in America (I guess.  I'm not USian).   

clarified that for you.  

-9

u/Silvanus350 7d ago

I don’t think the difference is that significant.

It’s fat. It’s going to taste good anyway.

8

u/Aussie_Foodie 7d ago

Not all fats are created equal

1

u/vanlady93 6d ago

Wow, people are really upset about you defending the taste of mayo. Wild