Just as I am horrified by the term “cooking wine”, I am disturbed by the description “sandwich filling” (Helen Mead, May 18).

I take it as gastronomically self-evident that if something does not appeal on its own, it won’t taste any better oozing from between two slices of bread, or piled precariously on one.

Not since Roman times has novelty cuisine been so much appreciated, and now its spreading into sandwiches, that most practical of portable comestibles.

The classic sandwich will consist of ham, beef, chicken or some other previously winged creature. If it must be fish, then there is little choice but salmon or trout. A garnish to suit individual, or even eccentric, taste is allowable.

Vegetarians are not well catered for, though Oscar Wilde’s praise of the cucumber sandwich cannot be ignored. Cheese is OK, but calls for beer, so is out for drivers. I shall say nothing of banana and peanut butter, except that it demonstrably leads to obesity, mid-winter blues and heartbreak.

I doubt that the sandwich was invented by the gambling earl whose name it commemorates. He probably saw his coachman eating one and followed suit.

William Dixon Smith, Welland Rise, Acomb, York.