St. Louis’ Prosperity Sandwich

The first clue is right there in the description for this sandwich on the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches. “Ham and turkey topped with broiled cheese,” it says. “Sometimes includes bacon and tomato.” Hm, I think to myself. That sounds familiar.

A little research shows that the sandwich was invented at the Mayfair Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri.While the Hot Brown got its name from the hotel, the Prosperity sandwich was reportedly named ironically after Herbert Hoover’s post-Black Friday habit of predicting future prosperity for Americans suffering through the Great Depression.

For the final nail in this coffin, we return to Wikipedia, where Prosperity Sandwich redirects to a short paragraph most of the way down the entry for Hot Brown:

In St. Louis, the Prosperity Sandwich is a similar dish, with origins at the Mayfair Hotel in the 1920s.^[5] It is still served in the area today, and sometimes called a “hot brown”.^[6]

I’ve done my time in St. Louis and I can’t say I’ve ever seen one of these on a menu, though at the time I was not particularly likely to have dined at the Mayfair (now the Magnolia) or the Lemp Mansion. Ruma’s is more like the kind of place I’d go, though their version of the Prosperity seems more like a Gerber with roast beef instead of ham.

But yes, it seems the Prosperity Sandwich is a St. Louis variant of Louisville’s more well-known Hot Brown, and while I won’t say it doesn’t deserve a spot on our list, it probably doesn’t require a deep dive. Many of the recipes for it I’ve found online are republished versions (like this one on a public TV station’s website) of a recipe from Cook’s Country, an upscale version that adds sauteed mushrooms and shallots to amp up the savory flavors. As I noted in my writeup of the Hot Brown, this sandwich is already an umami bomb and probably doesn’t require the boost.

This recipe on the St. Louis Today website, however, purports to be the real deal, the original recipe from the Mayfair Hotel back in the day. The recipe starts with three slices of bread, toasted.

Each slice of bread gets a slice of ham and a slice of turkey added to it.

These are then sliced in half diagonally. Each serving consists of three halves, arranged on a platter.

The sauce consists of a bechamel made with 2TBSP butter, 2TBSP flour, and 1 cup of milk, along with paprika, Worcestershire sauce, and Swiss and Parmesan cheese. Half of it gets poured over the sandwich before it’s browned under a broiler.

This is fine, if a little boring. The Swiss-based cheese sauce is a bit sweeter and nuttier than my usual preference but good. The meat mostly registers as a slight resistance while cutting the sandwich before you hit the toast.

However, the sandwich is lacking…something. Which brings to mind the “sometimes includes bacon and tomato” proviso in our first paragraph.

Much better. But of course, it is now basically a Hot Brown.

I tried again. Let’s make this sandwich interesting. I started with a nice sourdough instead of the white bread (good local bakery white bread but still somewhat plain).

I piled on the meats a little higher.

I even made the sauce using cheddar instead of Swiss to try and zest things up a bit.

The cheddar-based sauce was more like what I look for in a cheese sauce. Still, I ended up adding bacon and tomato and making it a Hot Brown.

I live about a five hour drive from St. Louis. I could easily have taken a weekend and driven down there to try this sandwich in its natural habitat. I’m not sure I would have had any new revelations about it though. There is not one damn thing wrong with buttered, toasted bread, topped with ham and turkey and a good cheese sauce, especially if bacon and tomato are involved.

I’m pretty sure you call that a Hot Brown, though.