The Monte Cristo Sandwich

If you live in America and are of a certain age, you’ve probably seen a Monte Cristo on a menu at some point of your life. It’s a type of American diner variant of the French Croque Monsieur, only instead of being doused in bechamel and cheese and then toasted under a broiler, it’s dipped in egg batter and fried. At its simplest, it could be called a ham and cheese sandwich on French toast. At its most ridiculous, it’s a battered and deep fried monstrosity.

It takes a certain kind of old school kind-of-crappy diner to serve it these days. You’re not looking for the true grit kind of place where the grillman’s been working there for 30 years and there’s 50 years worth of nicotine buildup on the walls; you’re not even looking for the place that opened last week that wants to be an upscale version of the old-school joint. You’re looking for a joint with tired waitresses serving breakfast all day to bored patrons sitting in booths with worn flowered upholstery. Basically, find you a Denny’s.

I’m not quite depressed enough to eat at Denny’s (nor motivated enough to drive to Elgin to try the Bennigans version–the aforementioned deep fried monstrosity), so I decided to make one for myself. The sandwich history posted on FoodTimeline.org helped me out here by quoting the oldest Monte Cristo sandwich recipe they could find, from the Brown Derby cookbook. (Brown Derby, by the way, was a chain of breakfast restaurants popular in California back in the ’30s and ’40s. Denny’s is a chain of breakfast restaurants started in California in the ’50s. Did Denny’s kill Brown Derby? It doesn’t matter. In the year 2032, after the Franchise Wars, all restaurants are Taco Bell.)

The sandwich history goes on to note that there are plenty of cookbooks with nearly identical recipes that were published before this one but with names like “French sandwich” or “Hot ham sandwich.” It’s not an unreasonable assumption that Brown Derby popularized the name. It’s so specific and yet irrelevant, like so many cutesy menu item names in diners. Yet if you look at the Brown Derby menus of the time, it’s the only item named like that. What about this sandwich, essentially a bread pudding with bits of ham and cheese in it, makes one think of the revenge tale of a man wrongly accused of treason? It is a puzzlement.

The Recipe

Monte Cristo Sandwich.
Take three slices of white bread. Butter the first and cover with lean baked ham and chicken. Butter the middle slice on both sides, place on meat, and cover with thinly sliced Swiss cheese. Butter the third slice and place, butter down, over cheese. Trim crusts; cut sandwich in two; secure with toothpicks; dip in light egg batter; fry in butter on all sides until golden brown. Remove toothpicks and serve with currant jelly, strawberry jam, or cranberry sauce.”

Take three slices of white bread. Butter the first

and cover with lean baked ham and chicken.

Butter the middle slice on both sides, place on meat,

and cover with thinly sliced Swiss cheese.

Butter the third slice and place, butter down, over cheese.

Trim crusts;

cut sandwich in two; secure with toothpicks;

dip in light egg batter;

fry in butter on all sides until golden brown. Remove toothpicks and serve with currant jelly, strawberry jam, or cranberry sauce.”

I can see why this was conceived as a triple-decker; the increased surface area on the outsides of the sandwich gives it the stability it needs to be fried “on all sides.” That’s right–stand that thing up in the pan and fry the cut bread ends as well. The toothpick is key here, giving it just enough structure not to slump over if you handle it carefully. Make sure to fry the meat side first though, as otherwise the cheese melts before the bread firms up and causes a mess when you try to flip it.

Bread puddings, strata, stuffing, and similar egg-battered bread products are generally made with stale bread, which absorbs the batter nicely and gives the end product a more interesting texture. Here, we’re working with plain old white bread and while it still sponges up that egg mixture, it just turns limp.

Still, there’s a certain charm to it, that sweet/savory/eggy combination that we’ve seen several times before. I found myself only wanting half the sandwich though. If you’re going to make one, be sure to have someone on hand to split it with.