I first heard this expression when, as a bartender, I asked a patron who'd ordered a pint if he wanted to see a menu. His response: "I'm all right, thanks. There's a pork chop in every beer."
I've since read variations on this expression. From whence does it come? And is it common (in variation) on both sides of the Atlantic and equator?
Best Answer
The three main versions of this saying that a Google search finds are "There's a pork chop in every beer," "There's a sandwich in every beer," and "There's a steak in every beer." None of them appear to be very old sayings. Here's the rundown on each one.
'a pork chop in every beer'
A posting from September 23, 2000, at StraightDope.com titled "The New and Improved Signature Thread," which collects "favorite signatures on the board," lists this as one of them:
An October 2, 2002, question at the message board of the same site asks whether a (12-ounce, presumably) beer has the same nutritional value as a pork chop, a question that suggests why someone thought of equating beer and pork chops in the first place. (One answer to the Straight Dope query made the seemingly sensible observation that, although the total calories from the two items might be roughly equal, the pork chop's calories come from protein and fat, while the beer's come from carbohydrates and alcohol.)
The 2000 match is the earliest one that my Google search could find.
'a sandwich in every beer'
The earliest Google match for this phrase is an October 9, 2003, comment on Fark.com, which says simply "There's a sandwich in every beer."
However, a Google Books search finds an instance from Robert Seidenberg, "Menace to Propriety," in Ski magazine (December 1995):
'a steak in every beer'
This expression, which appears to be especially common in Australia, has an earliest Google search occurrence of February 17, 2002, at the Bodybuilding.com forums, where a poster says this:
Conclusions
It seems highly likely that one of these three expressions supplied the inspiration for the other two, but the earliest recorded instances I've been able to find for each variant are fairly closely bunched: "sandwich," December 1995; "pork chop," September 2000: and "steak," February 2002. I suppose that "There's a sandwich in every beer" is the current top contender, but a periodicals archive for the 1970s through the 1990s might contain older instances of every one of these expressions.
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Update (May 17, 2019): 'barley sandwich' and 'liquid lunch'
I had never come across the expression "barley sandwich" (which Phil Sweet cites in a comment below this answer), but a bit of research indicates that it is older than the other expressions and may have inspired them.
The earliest match I could find in a Google Books search is from an unidentified item in Canada Poultryman, volume 60 (1973) [snippet view]:
The next-earliest match is from an unidentified poem in Aspen Anthology (1976) [combined snippets]:
And from Guy Vanderhaeghe, "Cages," in Prism International (Autumn 1981), a periodical published by the Department of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia:
A later item in Michigan Beer Guide, volume 10 (2006) makes the wholesome meal argument explicit:
Sounds yummy.
The expression "barley sandwich" in turn may owe something to "liquid lunch," which originated as a non-alcoholic protein-rich concoction in the early 1900s but eventually became a slang term for an alcohol-instead-of-food "lunch."
The alcohol-free expression appears, for example, in E.F. White, "The Fountain and Its Accessories," in The Spatula (July 1903):
But soon enough the serious drinkers lay claim to the expression. From Walter Atkinson, "Between Drinks," in The Phi Gamma Delta (March 1912):
The term "Fiji" in this quotation refers to a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.
And from George Kaufman & Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight: A Play in Three Acts (1932):
Paula's "liquid lunch" is, of course, the quintessential three-martini lunch (aka the "businessman's lunch"). It's certainly a far cry from the homely "barley sandwich." Nevertheless, the notion of alcoholic beverages as ersatz food does link the two terms—although I doubt that anyone has ever made the nutritional claim "a third of a pork chop in every martini—with a twist!"