I recently spotted a recipe or two on popular British newspapers’ websites for the classic French sandwich croque monsieur. What piqued my interest was that the illustrious chefs authoring the articles proposed slathering the bread in béchamel sauce. This struck me as somewhat curious but it has, I regret, been a long, long time since I had the pleasure of actually scoffing a real croque monsieur in France (as I recall, in the shadow of Notre Dame at no doubt hugely inflated price). I was therefore unsure of my grounding when questioning this recipe.
As is usual in this type of situation, I turned to my groaning cookery bookshelf to consult a couple of authoritative tomes on this matter, so let’s see what they have to say on the composition of croque monsieur.
Larousse on Croque Monsieur
Firstly, Larousse Gastronomique was dusted off – a 1976 reprint of an edition from 1961 no less – and consulted. I half expected it to consider such a dish too common but no, such was its quest for comprehensiveness that no dish was too humble for its hallowed pages. In fact, this edition includes references, though thankfully not recipes, for creatures that would have squeamish readers straight on the phone to the RSPCA.
Laroussse does muster a mildly derisive description of croque monsieur as “a fantastic name for a hot sandwich”. That seems hard to dispute, given the the recipe, such as it is, that is presented therein. All that is called for is two slices of bread to be buttered on one side only, filled with a rather meagre combination of a thin slice of Gruyere and a slice of lean ham, and fried in butter till golden.
Now I Can Cook…Croque Monsieur
Next, from publisher Phaidon’s series of authoritative works on national cuisines, comes Now I Can Cook by Ginette Mathiot (latterly republished as France the Cookbook). Allowing for the fact Mathiot died in 1998 and this book has had a modern update which I believe may have modified recipes, the recipe is still strikingly similar to Larousse.
The ingredients are still bread, butter, ham and Gruyere (albeit grated this time) and the sandwich is simply fried with not a drop of béchamel sauce in sight.
I accept that two recipes hardly constitute an exhaustive attempt to to answer the question posed in the title of this post. However, given that béchamel is totally omitted, not even suggested as an option (phrased in a “some cooks add…” context), it begs the question, where did the béchamel come from? Who, in its journey from some backstreet bistro to the British broadsheets, decided a whacking great dollop of béchamel sauce was absolutely part of the croque monsieur recipe?
Answers on a postcard, or in an update to this post – perhaps?