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?

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.

This is the most lame rebuttal I have seen this quarter.

In two parts:

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.

Ditto for Muffaletta eaters who scrape off the olives. Just order an Italian sub, already.

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're going to argue trace elements of cheese? Dude, even by sixth grade trying to make your case by trace elements is to concede the entire argument. Trace elements only count in chemistry and criminal forensics .

Ditto for Muffaletta eaters who scrape off the olives. Just order an Italian sub, already.

But an Italian sub isn't the same thing as an oliveless muffaletta. The meat and the cheese can be the same, but everything else is different.

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

Mystified by this, sweetie, but I'll try to clarify. In fact, I'll even do it in terms of that weird math stuff everyone seems to like.

I think that if you are ordering a specific sandwich, one that is comprised of two slices of bread and, say, five other ingredients plus condiments? You can ask them to hold one ingredient and you will still have the majority a) between your two slices of bread, b) ground to paste between your molars, c) heading down into the pool of churning acid that will reduce it to its most basic components (memo to Hec, the Sandwich Snob: it all goes there in the end), and d) is eventually sent around your body while the waste is eliminated.

If, however, you keep one of the five ingredients, and give someone else the rest, still between bread?

They've eaten your muufaletta. You've eaten a bunch of olives.

Damned if I know why that doesn't qualify as a minimum requirement.

Y'know, this is a weird argument, even for us. Carry on.

(Edited to fix spelling)

Mystified by this, sweetie

Sorry -- you agreed with Sean, and I thought that meant you were going by the receipt not what had been eaten, like he said.

Now I see you don't agree with him, so I withdraw that.

Same thing as if you lose everything but the olives.

Yeah, but if you eat only the olives, you still have, you know, a whole sandwich left over, which you don't have the other way around, and thus it's not all that difficult to say that the one (without the olives) is a muffaleta, and the other (the olives) is not.

Ditto for Muffaletta eaters who scrape off the olives.

Pffft.... If you were to scrape the olives off and leave it sitting out, somebody else walking by would see it, and at first glance, they'd probably think "hey look, a muffaleta," not "I think I know wwhat that is, but I better double check that the olive salad is on it before I'm satisfied with my sandwich identification abilities."

but if you eat only the olives, you still have, you know, a whole sandwich left

So if you lose everything but the bread and the olives, it's then still a muffaletta?

Assuming they didn't just put "sandwich" on the receipt, which could wreck everything.

Now I see you don't agree with him, so I withdraw that.

Nah, I do agree with him on the hard currency part, because from what I remember of the folks who lifted an eyebrow as they held the olives, thirty plus years ago in NOLA? They wrote "muffaletta n/o" on the receipt.

But you asked specifically what you were eating if you only ate the olives. I think in that instance, you're eating olives.

Unlike Hil, I consider the olives to be the defining ingredient of the muffaletta - even moreso than the bread. It is not a mere condiment but that thing which transforms an otherwise basic Italian sandwich into a muffy. It is the transmogrifier.

It's like saying, "I made Coq au vin with hot dogs and beer instead of chicken and wine."