A Post-Thanksgiving Hot Brown

Elsewhere there is a little discussion of what to do after Thanksgiving for lunch, which includes the suggestion of... get ready for a shocker... turkey sandwiches.

No insult to turkey sandwiches, which are a very fine thing and a worthy reward Saturday, Sunday, maybe even Monday for hard work the previous Thursday. But there's more than one way to slap leftover turkey on bread, and this year I decided to try my hand at a regional classic-- the legendary Hot Brown sandwich from the Brown Hotel in Louisville, happily still standing and operating in its 84th year as a landmark Louisville building (although there was about a decade when it was not in operation as a hotel).



As the hotel's site tells the story of the dish's invention:

In the 1920's, The Brown Hotel drew over 1,200 guests each evening for its dinner dance. In the wee hours of the morning, the guests would grow tired of dancing and retire to the restaurant for a bite to eat. Diners were growing rapidly bored with the traditional ham and eggs, so Chef Fred Schmidt set out to create something new to tempt his guests' palates. His unique creation was an open-faced turkey sandwich with bacon and a delicate Mornay sauce.

Well, look at the recipe and it soon becomes obvious what the missing ingredient in this legend is: those crowds were drunk on Jazz Age cocktails (Volstead notwithstanding) and needed something starchy to soak the stuff up. The Hot Brown is pretty much exactly what you'd expect to get if you asked the stoutly Teutonic chef back then at a hoity-toity place like the Brown to whip up something like biscuits and gravy; you'd get a mornay sauce (aka, gravy) on toast (genteel toast, not the rustic, Yoknapatawphan biscuit) with a finishing sprinkle of parmesan to give it a touch of sophistication you'd never have gotten from Mama's skillet-lickins. In 1927, this was fine stuff, in all the senses of the adjective.

So how is it in 2007? We start by making a roux while the bacon fries...



Add milk, parmesan and egg till it forms a velvety white Mornay, add salt and pepper to taste (no doubt white pepper in good burgher Schmidt's hightoned kitchen). Set aside while the toast toasts, then cover it with lots of fresh roasted turkey...



Cover that with the Mornay, sprinkle with more parmesan, and place under the broiler.



When speckled brown, remove and make an X of bacon.



The photos on the Brown's website show the venerable sandwich tarted up with roasted tomatoes* and sprinkles of parsley; it's possible that they were present in Herr Schmidt's original inspiration but I think it just as likely that this was what the original looked like, very plain and, indeed, very white food (in all the senses of the adjective). It is filling, and the parmesan gives it the flavor of something beyond cream, but it seems bland, too genteel to modern palates. Too much culinary history has passed to wholeheartedly embrace a dish like this that speaks so strongly of a time and a place when this was sophistication; it is too familiar to be the authentic cuisine of another culture, yet too dressed-up and cosmopolitan to be comfort food, regional Southern cuisine.

Still, we can admire it for what it is-- an extremely well-balanced dish on its own terms, meeting perfectly the demands of a clientele for comfort food and the expectations of a fine establishment for an ideal of excellence at every meal. Herr Schmidt was inspired the night he made it up, and across the gulf of the decades, I salute him and his famous dish.

* Though absent in the official recipe, tomatoes seem to turn up in most of the variants found in searching the web, sometimes on top of the turkey and under the sauce. Most variants also increase the amount of cheese substantially.

OK, now I'm thinking we have to go there...even though it isn't Derby Day...

I love the Brown Hotel and I also love the Seelbach, down the street, which is just as historic and has a lovely restaurant called the Oakroom where they serve a classic southern business-mans lunch and have a great selection of bourbon to sample.

It is always amazing to me that Louisville can support these two classic hotels when many cities cannot even support their one legend. i always try and stay at a hotel like the Brown when I travel...I like the Rittenhouse in Philly, the Peabody in Memphis, the Hermitage in Nashville. All remind me that travel was once special and not the grind that it is today.

Thanks for posting those pics...they actually make me wish for another dispatch to Louisville.

If you've been to both, maybe you can answer this-- does one of them have an old German beerhall looking room in the cellar? We walked through one of them about 10 years ago and saw such a room, and I was thinking that probably went nicely with Chef Schmidt's presence (or with an owner named Seelbach), but I can't find any sign of it on either hotel's site.

Perhaps you mean the Rathskeller in the basement of the Seelbach Hotel. Here is a link to the photo on the Seelbach website.

http://www.seelbachhilton.com/cateringe ... eller.html

It seems to match the description, if not my less-than-entirely-trustworthy 10-year-old memory... thanks!

Made the Hot Brown today for the wife with our leftovers....very easy to follow recipe on the Brown Hotel website. Massive hit with the wife...made me wish i was boozed up or hung over as the hot brown seems like a good remedy for the munchies or the spins. Even looked like Mike G's pictures