But if you buy a sandwich and fail to eat the bread, how is that not still a sandwich, just one eaten in a peculiar manner?

You're presuming something like a muffeletta is an irreducible essence, when it is rather the sum of its parts. Without the olives (or bread) it's not a muffeletta. It's a sub or it's a pile of cold cuts but it isn't a muffeletta.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

You need the bread.

I would have thought there's SOME minimum requirement. Sean and Deb, NSM.

If you order a cheeseburger, hold the cheese, what have you ordered? If you do the cheese holding yourself, what have you eaten?

I agree that there's an irreducible essence to many dishes. Whether or not it's the olive wrt muffalettas, I dunno.

All I'm saying is ... somebody needs to give Dana a damn muffaletta (however you choose to define it) before she starts contemplating life with only one eye.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

I've ordered a pattieless Whopper in Burger King. It's a hamburger roll with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle, onion, and mustard.

But, you're right. If you order a cheeseburger and don't eat the cheese, you've eaten a hamburger. However, if you order a cheeseburger and don't eat the onions, you've still eaten a cheeseburger.

So if you buy a muffaleta and only eat the olives, you've eaten a muffy?

Well, you've eaten a really specific part of a muffaleta.

Mostly you've blown an awful lot of cash just to eat olive salad.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese and eat it, you have not just eaten a cheese burger. You ate a hamburger.

If you order a cheeseburger and scrape off the cheese, when there was a perfectly good hamburger on the menu -- a) you're a whacko. b) You'll probably have a hard time scraping it all off, thus leaving some behind, thus making what you ate not really a hamberger any more than it was a cheeseburger, and since you've now entered some weird food anomaly zone, the best reference is probably to look at the receipt, which will say CHEESEBURGER on it.

you've eaten a really specific part of a muffaleta.

But to go by your previous post, you've eaten a muffaletta. If you lose just the olives, have you eaten a muffaletta or part of one?

If you lose just the olives, have you eaten a muffaletta or part of one?

What does it say on the receipt?

What does it say on the receipt?

Same thing as if you lose everything but the olives.

Thank you, Jen. Will no one think of me?

OK, forget the olives. Say I order a muffaleta without the meat. Just the cheese and olives and whatever else usually goes on it, on the muffaletta bread. Is that a muffaletta? What if someone orders it with all the usual stuff, but without the cheese? What if you add mustard? What about if you put all the usual muffaletta fillings, including the olive salad, onto a bulke roll? What about a sub roll?