While English language tends to be fairly complicated, us anglophones are typically straightforward about naming our food. When it involves dishes like chicken wings, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs or pie , there’s little doubt about what’s on the plate ahead of you.
Of course, this isn’t always the case, as I discovered shortly before a visit to Louisville. As a lifelong New Englander , i used to be largely unaware of the culinary atmosphere of the Kentucky , until an honest friend recommended that I sample one among the city’s most famous dishes: the recent Brown.
Though I had some notion of the colour and temperature of the dish, the odd and slightly unappealing name left tons to the imagination. i made a decision to forgo any research into the ingredients, instead allowing the components of the dish to return as a complete surprise. Upon my arrival to the town , nestled on the banks of the Ohio , I came face-to-plate with my first Hot Brown.
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The bottom layer consisted of 4 slices of Texas toast topped by a generous helping of sliced turkey breast, then slathered with a healthy dose of Mornay sauce and broiled, ensuring that no normal person would plan to eat the meal without silverware. an outsized “X” fashioned out of bacon marked the spot where i started to dig in, and that i quickly found myself in total agreement with the people of Kentucky: this dish just could be the culinary gem of Louisville.
Despite the shortage of description surrounding the name, the origin story of the dish is definitely traceable. Kentuckians can thank to at least one person in particular: Fred K. Schmidt, a chef at the famed Brown Hotel. His story dates back to 1926, a time when dinner and dancing was a well-liked pastime, with events held within the hotel stretching into the first hours of the morning.
The event could draw upwards of thousand people per night, after which the exhausted guests would reach the hotel’s restaurant for a snack. Chef Schmidt, having grown uninterested in producing a near-constant stream of ham and eggs, decided to make something with a touch more flair. This marriage of turkey, bacon and Mornay sauce was successful with the patrons, and almost a century later, the town of Louisville continues to sing the praises of the recent Brown.
A dish so integral to a city’s history is sure to be reproduced in many various forms. Since the 1920s, Hot Brown recipes have undergone edits starting from subtle to an entire departure from the first format. While the fashionable day recipe espoused by the Brown Hotel includes turkey, bacon, Mornay sauce and tomatoes, certain variations on the recipe involve the addition of pimiento, mushrooms or maybe canned peaches.
The Hot Brown was at just one occasion amid a sister sandwich referred to as the cold brown, also crafted by Fred K. Schmidt, consisting of a base of bread, topped with turkey, tomato, and a sliced boiled egg , all covered in Thousand Island dressing. Sadly, the cold brown didn’t reach similar heights of acclaim as its relative, and therefore the sandwich is difficult to seek out today, even in its birthplace.
While the cold brown was banished to the realm of obscurity, there are variety of sandwiches that are closely associated with our modern-day Hot Brown. the recent Brown itself is taken into account a subspecies of the Welsh rarebit , a creation that was first recorded within the early 1700s. because the name implies, this sandwich is of Welsh origin, consisting of melted cheese poured over toast.
The Turkey Devonshire, nearly identical in composition to the recent Brown, hails from the town of Pittsburgh, created by Frank Blandi in 1934. the 2 dishes share a base of turkey and toast, amid a layer of white sauce garnished with bacon, though modern Devonshire recipes sometimes lack the Roma tomatoes.
As the Hot Brown is roughly a decade older than the Devonshire, it’s unknown if Blandi based his creation off of the Louisville treat, or if the similarity between the 2 sandwiches is simply a cheerful accident.
Those in search of the right Hot Brown might want to consult the Louisville tourism board website and scan through the “Hot Brown Hop,” a catalog of the various local restaurants serving the famed dish. For a less conventional rendition of the meal, one could sample the recent Brown pizza at Sicilian pizza & Pasta, or an Italian variant served on ciabatta bread from the come Inn (open for take-out at the time of publication).
For Hot Brown purists, Bristol Bar & Grille (also open for take-out) offers a standard combat the meal, and there’s , of course, no purer source than the very establishment that created the sandwich, the Brown Hotel. therefore the next time you discover yourself in Louisville, you’ll raise a glass of bourbon in honor of Fred K. Schmidt, the person with an excellent talent for cooking, and distinctly less talent for thinking up appetizing names for his creations.