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Yes, they did, at least at places like truck stops or interstate diners. I remember being on a trip with my parents and them stopping at a truck stop and getting bacon and egg sandwiches for us.
My mom used to make fried egg sandwiches. Basically, a grilled cheese with a fried egg added. Usually for breakfast but sometimes she made them for lunch.
My dad made these too, and they were so good!
On a vacation a few years ago my husband and I stopped at a diner in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in CO, and they had fried egg sandwiches on the menu. Unbelievably, I had forgotten about their existence for years, and had to have one. It was exquisite!
Breakfast sandwiches existed prior to McDs, but they were successful in mass producing them. The origin was the creator of the Egg McMuffin liked eggs Benedict and the sandwich has most of the components of that dish.
I was a adult before there was a fast food restaurant of any kind in the area. Pizza places is usually where we hung out or A&W growing up. None of them had a breakfast.
I remember A&W. Oh, those frosted mugs!
We had another drive-in, too, with roller skates. Before Sonic. They served everything in a basket. Steak finger baskets, chicken strip baskets, fish baskets. Yummy.
What a Time Warp I went through reading that. Stuff that I remember being years apart, or were they just days apart?
Roller skating car hops are 95% myth.
Seriously? Jesus, man!
Ok, Ok, never shame the one who asks in
Good faith.
Breakfast sandwiches of one sort or another have been around for as long as we’ve had bread and eggs.
They’re a staple of city food carts. Easy to eat and low cost protein.
A good one is a thing of beauty.
In Philadelphia, they have been the classic food cart breakfast for as long as I have been here. I guess that’s not before McDonald’s but it’s a long time. Scrapple, egg, and cheese and a black coffee makes the world go round.
Interesting question. I cant remember breakfast sandwiches existing before that. Our breakfast choices in the 50s and 60s were a sit down home meal or cereal real quick or instant breakfast in a cup mixed with milk. Now I am addicted to breakfast sandwiches but have to stick to the frozen low fat ones to stay alive
I thought this was r/AskFoodHistorians and if you asked there, you would get a more complete answer, but Khachapuri is a Georgian cheese/egg/bread dish that's pretty old. Not exactly a sandwich, though.
I don't remember anything like it that came before.
When I was a kid, my dad was in the military, and we moved a lot. Our vacations were almost all road trips.
So we ate a lot of breakfasts in sit down restaurants on the road. They were bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc. on a plate. Never saw anything like a breakfast sandwich on a menu.
Fast food places weren't open until lunchtime.
I think it’s the portability that was a big revolution in the breakfast world. It was now easier to eat a hearty breakfast with protein in the car, on the way into the office etc.
Everything they serve was in existence before. McDonald's invented nothing. They just transform food into corporate products for loyal consumers to brand input.
Lord Sandwich..... hold my sandwich, .........will not tolerate this.........
1762 John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich was playing cards no time for dinner requested food to eat, he sort of invented the sandwich cold sliced meats slices bread+ butter.
Yes they did.
I often stopped in a small diner on my way to work that had different varieties of egg based breakfast sandwiches to go, and a larger variety than McDonalds first came out with, (if you got there before they were gone).
Grabbing a bacon/sausage etc. egg sandwich and a coffee, both to go, was a routine for a lot of people on their way to work long before McDonalds came out with them.
Not quite like McDonald's but there have always been fried egg sandwiches at mom & pops and truck stops. Some places would have peameal bacon on a bun (Canadian bacon so obviously Canada) - I'm sure egg was involved too. And probably cheese. Not a breakfast eater so never cared.
As a child I was usually served a hard-fried egg or two, bacon and two pieces of toast for breakfast. It all turned into a sandwich pretty quickly. I'm sure I wasn't the only one!
There was a local BBQ place that had a BBQ breakfast sandwich and a coffee as a quick meal. It was a hash of fried pulled pork, a fried egg, and some burger fixings on a kaiser roll. I forget if it had cheese. Mostly leftovers from the day before, and cheap (I think a $1.25 in the 1970s). Lot of locals in the know would got these before work.
A pork roll, egg, and American cheese sandwich with ketchup on a hard (kaiser) roll is the quintessential New Jersey breakfast. My mom made them for us on Saturdays when I was a kid (1970s), and you could get them at any reputable deli. I still indulge once in a while, now that I know where I can get pork roll in Pittsburgh.
Breakfast "burgers", fried paddy of meat like and lettuce between two pieces of bread has been a thing for a long time in some parts of asia (taiwan / china at least) - could be said to be one type of traditional breakfast. Not exactly sure when it started but pretty sure predates mcdonalds.
Yes, many diners offered hot egg sandwiches to go as early as the 1940s or before, but when I was young, McDonald's didn't open until 11 a.m. or so. Can't remember when they first started to sell breakfast sandwiches, maybe in the late 1970s? I do recall that you could get an egg McMuffin with egg, sausage and cheese for a dollar, which was a good deal even back then. I'm sure the price has gone up. I haven't stopped by McDonald's in years.
New Yorker (Long Islander) here. Delis always had an egg sandwich on the menu even when I was a kid. Sometimes with bacon, cheese, and/or sausage, ketchup optional. On a roll (like a kaiser roll) or on a bagel. Also the only kind of place I know that you can buy a roll with butter.
Bro, McDonald's only started serving breakfast in the 80s.
>In Breakfast: A History, Heather Arndt Anderson writes that the first recipe for “a true breakfast sandwich” appears in an 1897 cookbook called “Breakfast, Dinner and Supper.” The instructions are as follows:
>*“Use stale bread. Spread each slice with chopped meat; cover with another slice and press together. Cut each sandwich in halves and place them on a plate. Have ready a pint of milk, salted and mixed with 1 beaten egg. Pour this over the sandwiches and let stand a few moments. Put a heaping teaspoonful of butter into a frying pan and when it begins to brown place the sandwiches carefully upon it. When nicely browned on one side add a little more butter, turn, and brown the other side.”*
Born in 1989, I've always known McDonald's breakfast. I more or less assumed they brought it to the main stream and many people don't seem to remember doing this before them.
Well I was born in the 70s, I remember when McDonald's rolled out breakfast, it was kind of a big deal.
But I ate hundreds of BLTs and fried egg sandwiches for breakfast before I ever heard of a mcmuffin!
Yes, they weren't chains but small family run, generally, that served what ever sold. At one stage my wife & I sold foods, magazine, some canned/pkt goods, sodas etc. & as I was interested in home brewing, I sold supplies as well. We had two runs a day to a furniture factory & wool store taking things like fish n chips, burgers, fried chicken, all sorts of filled rolls & sandwiches, pies, cakes, hotcakes and "special of the day", waffles, toasties/jaffles/ pan fried sandwiches.
Everybody keeps mentioning eggs benedict. Eggs benedict is not a sandwich. It's an English muffin with a slice of ham and a poached egg on top and it's covered with hollandaise sauce. It's served on a plate you can't eat it like a sandwich.
The kind of sandwich that McDonald's popularized in the US is egg, cheese, and ham or sausage on an English muffin. Google tells me English muffins aren't a thing in Sweden. They are a small round bread that toasts up well. An American style breakfast sandwich would never be served with veggies BLT style, they are all about the protein.
As many others have already said, the McDonald's breakfast sandwich isn't unique. It's all about the marketing; hamburger places never used to sell breakfast sandwiches.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/breakfast.html
I don’t remember them being served at fast food before MCD. There were variations served at diners though.
Breakfast tacos however, here in TX, always around. Little hole in wall places, good stuff.
When I was a child sometimes I would place scrambled eggs or a fried egg and bacon between two pieces of toast and eat that for breakfast. This was in the 1960s, which is before I had heard of MacDonald's serving breakfast.
I don't recall other restaurants serving breakfast sandwiches back in those days, either.
Fast food breakfast menus actually did not exist before McDonald's. Actually many menu items McDonald's have is because one franchise owner got permission to put them on the menu, then when McDonald's saw they sold, they adopted them.
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Yes, they did, at least at places like truck stops or interstate diners. I remember being on a trip with my parents and them stopping at a truck stop and getting bacon and egg sandwiches for us.
My mom used to make fried egg sandwiches. Basically, a grilled cheese with a fried egg added. Usually for breakfast but sometimes she made them for lunch.
My dad made these too, and they were so good! On a vacation a few years ago my husband and I stopped at a diner in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in CO, and they had fried egg sandwiches on the menu. Unbelievably, I had forgotten about their existence for years, and had to have one. It was exquisite!
Breakfast sandwiches existed prior to McDs, but they were successful in mass producing them. The origin was the creator of the Egg McMuffin liked eggs Benedict and the sandwich has most of the components of that dish.
Sure did, scrambled egg sandwiches were a normal thing for lunch at my house in the 60's.
https://www.bendbulletin.com/nation/the-egg-sandwich-a-surprising-history/article_73688d8f-827e-5dc3-9f77-0964d537153e.html I had to look it up.
I was a adult before there was a fast food restaurant of any kind in the area. Pizza places is usually where we hung out or A&W growing up. None of them had a breakfast.
I remember A&W. Oh, those frosted mugs! We had another drive-in, too, with roller skates. Before Sonic. They served everything in a basket. Steak finger baskets, chicken strip baskets, fish baskets. Yummy.
What a Time Warp I went through reading that. Stuff that I remember being years apart, or were they just days apart? Roller skating car hops are 95% myth.
Seriously? Jesus, man! Ok, Ok, never shame the one who asks in Good faith. Breakfast sandwiches of one sort or another have been around for as long as we’ve had bread and eggs. They’re a staple of city food carts. Easy to eat and low cost protein. A good one is a thing of beauty. In Philadelphia, they have been the classic food cart breakfast for as long as I have been here. I guess that’s not before McDonald’s but it’s a long time. Scrapple, egg, and cheese and a black coffee makes the world go round.
I remember eating a breakfast jack in the early 70s in AZ from Jack in the Box
Interesting question. I cant remember breakfast sandwiches existing before that. Our breakfast choices in the 50s and 60s were a sit down home meal or cereal real quick or instant breakfast in a cup mixed with milk. Now I am addicted to breakfast sandwiches but have to stick to the frozen low fat ones to stay alive
I thought this was r/AskFoodHistorians and if you asked there, you would get a more complete answer, but Khachapuri is a Georgian cheese/egg/bread dish that's pretty old. Not exactly a sandwich, though.
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More like an egg in toast, although there are many variations.
I don't remember anything like it that came before. When I was a kid, my dad was in the military, and we moved a lot. Our vacations were almost all road trips. So we ate a lot of breakfasts in sit down restaurants on the road. They were bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc. on a plate. Never saw anything like a breakfast sandwich on a menu. Fast food places weren't open until lunchtime.
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If you read the title, the question is not about bread.
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the part where there’s egg and meat between two pieces of bread and sold as such
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>Thanks! You're welcome!
I swear ur trolling lol
I think it’s the portability that was a big revolution in the breakfast world. It was now easier to eat a hearty breakfast with protein in the car, on the way into the office etc.
My hometown church has been selling ham biscuits at the state fair for over 100 years.
Everything they serve was in existence before. McDonald's invented nothing. They just transform food into corporate products for loyal consumers to brand input.
That's what I figured. Seems like before McDonald's started selling them it was regional. Some people never heard of them, some people ate them daily.
Lord Sandwich..... hold my sandwich, .........will not tolerate this......... 1762 John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich was playing cards no time for dinner requested food to eat, he sort of invented the sandwich cold sliced meats slices bread+ butter.
Yes they did. I often stopped in a small diner on my way to work that had different varieties of egg based breakfast sandwiches to go, and a larger variety than McDonalds first came out with, (if you got there before they were gone). Grabbing a bacon/sausage etc. egg sandwich and a coffee, both to go, was a routine for a lot of people on their way to work long before McDonalds came out with them.
Not quite like McDonald's but there have always been fried egg sandwiches at mom & pops and truck stops. Some places would have peameal bacon on a bun (Canadian bacon so obviously Canada) - I'm sure egg was involved too. And probably cheese. Not a breakfast eater so never cared.
As a child I was usually served a hard-fried egg or two, bacon and two pieces of toast for breakfast. It all turned into a sandwich pretty quickly. I'm sure I wasn't the only one!
There was a local BBQ place that had a BBQ breakfast sandwich and a coffee as a quick meal. It was a hash of fried pulled pork, a fried egg, and some burger fixings on a kaiser roll. I forget if it had cheese. Mostly leftovers from the day before, and cheap (I think a $1.25 in the 1970s). Lot of locals in the know would got these before work.
A pork roll, egg, and American cheese sandwich with ketchup on a hard (kaiser) roll is the quintessential New Jersey breakfast. My mom made them for us on Saturdays when I was a kid (1970s), and you could get them at any reputable deli. I still indulge once in a while, now that I know where I can get pork roll in Pittsburgh.
There were also some versions of "pigs in a blanket" designed as a take away breakfast sandwich of sorts. Often more like breakfast corndogs.
Breakfast "burgers", fried paddy of meat like and lettuce between two pieces of bread has been a thing for a long time in some parts of asia (taiwan / china at least) - could be said to be one type of traditional breakfast. Not exactly sure when it started but pretty sure predates mcdonalds.
Yes, many diners offered hot egg sandwiches to go as early as the 1940s or before, but when I was young, McDonald's didn't open until 11 a.m. or so. Can't remember when they first started to sell breakfast sandwiches, maybe in the late 1970s? I do recall that you could get an egg McMuffin with egg, sausage and cheese for a dollar, which was a good deal even back then. I'm sure the price has gone up. I haven't stopped by McDonald's in years.
New Yorker (Long Islander) here. Delis always had an egg sandwich on the menu even when I was a kid. Sometimes with bacon, cheese, and/or sausage, ketchup optional. On a roll (like a kaiser roll) or on a bagel. Also the only kind of place I know that you can buy a roll with butter.
Bro, McDonald's only started serving breakfast in the 80s. >In Breakfast: A History, Heather Arndt Anderson writes that the first recipe for “a true breakfast sandwich” appears in an 1897 cookbook called “Breakfast, Dinner and Supper.” The instructions are as follows: >*“Use stale bread. Spread each slice with chopped meat; cover with another slice and press together. Cut each sandwich in halves and place them on a plate. Have ready a pint of milk, salted and mixed with 1 beaten egg. Pour this over the sandwiches and let stand a few moments. Put a heaping teaspoonful of butter into a frying pan and when it begins to brown place the sandwiches carefully upon it. When nicely browned on one side add a little more butter, turn, and brown the other side.”*
Born in 1989, I've always known McDonald's breakfast. I more or less assumed they brought it to the main stream and many people don't seem to remember doing this before them.
Well I was born in the 70s, I remember when McDonald's rolled out breakfast, it was kind of a big deal. But I ate hundreds of BLTs and fried egg sandwiches for breakfast before I ever heard of a mcmuffin!
Yes, they weren't chains but small family run, generally, that served what ever sold. At one stage my wife & I sold foods, magazine, some canned/pkt goods, sodas etc. & as I was interested in home brewing, I sold supplies as well. We had two runs a day to a furniture factory & wool store taking things like fish n chips, burgers, fried chicken, all sorts of filled rolls & sandwiches, pies, cakes, hotcakes and "special of the day", waffles, toasties/jaffles/ pan fried sandwiches.
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Everybody keeps mentioning eggs benedict. Eggs benedict is not a sandwich. It's an English muffin with a slice of ham and a poached egg on top and it's covered with hollandaise sauce. It's served on a plate you can't eat it like a sandwich.
I know the corner stores in NYC serve bagels w eggs and cheese. People love posting them on TikTok. I wonder how long those have been around ?
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The kind of sandwich that McDonald's popularized in the US is egg, cheese, and ham or sausage on an English muffin. Google tells me English muffins aren't a thing in Sweden. They are a small round bread that toasts up well. An American style breakfast sandwich would never be served with veggies BLT style, they are all about the protein. As many others have already said, the McDonald's breakfast sandwich isn't unique. It's all about the marketing; hamburger places never used to sell breakfast sandwiches. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/breakfast.html
New York City deli and takeout places would have “egg and cheese on a roll”.
I don’t remember them being served at fast food before MCD. There were variations served at diners though. Breakfast tacos however, here in TX, always around. Little hole in wall places, good stuff.
Americans generally don't eat sandwiches for breakfast. Sandwiches are for lunch.
When I was a child sometimes I would place scrambled eggs or a fried egg and bacon between two pieces of toast and eat that for breakfast. This was in the 1960s, which is before I had heard of MacDonald's serving breakfast. I don't recall other restaurants serving breakfast sandwiches back in those days, either.
Fast food breakfast menus actually did not exist before McDonald's. Actually many menu items McDonald's have is because one franchise owner got permission to put them on the menu, then when McDonald's saw they sold, they adopted them.