The omnipresent Italian snack food, tramezzini are small, crustless sandwiches made with white milk-based bread, and stuffed with anything from tuna and hard-boiled eggs to porchetta and radicchio depending on the season and the region. Born in Torino in the 1920s—allegedly at the gilded Caffè Mulassano—tramezzini were the Italian answer to the English tea sandwiches, made immediately more appealing by replacing vegetables with things like prosciutto and tea with alcoholic beverages.
Interestingly enough, the tiny sandwiches weren’t actually dubbed “tramezzini” until the 1930s, when writer and philosopher Gabriele D’Annunzio supposedly coined the word, which is meant to sound like a combination of triangolo (triangle), tra between), and mezzo (middle). Milk-based bread was not traditionally prevalent in the Italian diet, but became a café staple post-WWII, thanks to American and English influences.