Tuna Melt

Pret a Manger lists a Tuna Melt Toastie on its hot menu beside the ham and cheese, and the item holds most of what a British tuna melt is: tinned tuna and mayonnaise under a layer of Cheddar, two slices of bread, and a press that comes down on the lot. The platen hisses, the edges of the bread are pinched shut, and a smell of hot tinned fish and browning butter drifts across the counter for the two or three minutes it takes. Because the seam is closed, everything inside cooks in its own steam. The tuna loosens, the cheese slides down into it, and the first bite goes through a ridged, crackling crust into a filling that blisters the palate of anyone in a hurry.

Tuna from a tin. Mayonnaise from a jar. Cheddar from the fridge. Sliced white from the bag. Every ingredient is a cupboard staple, and published recipes from Hovis and ITV's Good Morning Britain both build it from tinned tuna, mayonnaise and mature Cheddar. The mayonnaise is kept tight and the tuna drained hard, because a wet filling steams the bread soft before the outside has crisped. The cheese goes on top of the fish so it melts down and glues the tuna together instead of sliding out of the seam. Sweetcorn is the old British partner for tinned tuna, and in a melt the kernels hold their shape in the heat and burst sweet against the salt of the cheese. A sliced gherkin or a few rings of red onion put a sharp snap in the middle of all that softness.

The word melt arrived from American lunch counters, where the same filling is broiled open on rye, and British kitchens attached it to a sandwich they already knew how to make. At home the same thing is called a toastie, and the two names share one object: a golden triangle, usually cut corner to corner, with a pale ribbon of cheese showing at the cut and a thread of steam coming off it. In a chain it comes out in a paper sleeve that turns translucent with butter before the walk back to the desk. The lid of a sandwich toaster clicks shut, the machine ticks as it heats, and a sharp, savoury smell fills a small kitchen well before the light on top changes colour. Nobody waits for it to cool. A melt that has sat for ten minutes sets into a dense, waxy block, and the crust loses its edge.

The appliance sets the proportions. A toaster with deep triangular wells needs a sandwich scooped and packed to fit, so the tuna is portioned by the spoonful and the cheese is cut in thin slices or grated to lie flat. A flat panini press forgives a looser build, though it squeezes mayonnaise out of the sides if the stack is tall. Hot sauce or a smear of mustard on the inner face of the bread cuts through the richness of fish and melted cheese together. A good counter will take any of these swaps and leave the name on the menu unchanged.

A tin and a block of cheese become a hot lunch in under five minutes, which suits a British lunch break and explains the melt's place on café and chain menus beside the other toasties. The grill marks on the crust are a small pleasure of their own, branded in dark ridges that crack under the knife. The tuna carries enough salt that a pickle on the side does the work of a sauce, and a mug of tea is the usual drink beside it.

The Breville years

Britain's sealed toastie rests on an appliance with a documented date. Breville's electric toasted-sandwich maker went on sale in Australia in 1974, with a reported 400,000 sold in its first year, and the brand carried it on to New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The British launch is said to have followed shortly after the Australian debut. It had a precursor: Dr Ernest Smithers of Bondi patented the stovetop jaffle iron in Australia in 1949. In Britain the machine became known as the Breville, and a filled, pressed sandwich was sometimes called a breville.

No record dates the first tuna melt on a British menu. The filling is a long-standing sandwich-shop pairing, the cheese is the cupboard Cheddar, and the name came across from the United States, so the British melt is best read as a toastie that took on a new label, with the Breville years as the period when pressing a filled sandwich shut became ordinary. A 2005 survey reported that 45 percent of British adults owned a sandwich toaster and did not use it, which leaves a great many dusty machines waiting for a tin of tuna.

The most specific modern statement of the idea comes from London sandwich maker Max Halley of Max's Sandwich Shop. He has said that a tuna melt he ate in Elephant and Castle came out floppy and left him wishing it were a toastie. His published recipe binds the tuna with mayonnaise and grated gherkin, tops it with mozzarella, and presses the sandwich shut. His fix, a lid of crisp bread sealed over a hot filling, is the one Breville's machine began selling to British kitchens in the 1970s.