Le Sandwich Américain

Greetings sandwich friends! It’s late in May, and I’ve been hustling all month, though it may not seem that way based on this site alone. Among my other projects is a piece I wrote and provided all the photographs for that went up on foodie website The Takeout a few days ago: 17 Carb-On-Carb Sandwiches That Understand the Beauty of Bread. And, as it happens, today’s sandwich, France’s Sandwich Américain was mentioned in that piece.

It has also made an appearance on the Tribunal once before, as an aside while discussing the Belgian Mitraillette sandwich, of which it is a variant. Here is a Mitraillette I made when writing about them a few years ago:

Mitraillette means “machine gun,” the name representing a visual gag where the French roll or baguette is like the barrel of a gun and the frites festooning the sandwich like the bullets of a belt-fed Browning or similar. I mentioned at the time that in the northern parts of France where the sandwich is also popular, the name is simpler, more direct: Américain it is called, Le sandwich américain, whether due to that damnable and abiding connection between Americans and our guns or simply because the culinary excess the sandwich represents seems particularly American.

It is likely the latter, and I haven’t the heart to discuss the former at this time in any case.

The Américain consists of hamburger patties, fried, in a baguette, with tomato, lettuce, French fries, and some combination of condiments potentially including mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, and of course ketchup.

Not a lot to it. Fry up a couple of quarter pound hamburger patties. I’m doing them smashburger style ’cause that’s what I like, but the examples I’ve seen photos of from France have been more of the thick, hand-formed variety. If I’m gonna Américain though, I’m gonna Américain.

Rather than melting the cheese on the patties while they cook, the directions I’ve read call for broiling it after the fact, which has the additional effect of toasting the baguette, which is nice. Before placing the patties in the previous photos, I spread Dijon mustard on the bottom half of the bread, which isn’t immediately obvious. Nor is the mayonnaise underneath the green leaf lettuce and sliced tomato in the following photo, but it is there.

The finishing touch is a handful of fresh, hot frites, crisscrossed with a lashing of ketchup.

This heterogenous pile of food is awkward to fold over into a sandwich but I manage it.

Smashburgers may not be the best choice here–they hang out over the edge of the baguette, nearly dragging everything else with them. If those crisply browned edges are wrong though, I don’t want to be right.

And it’s satisfying, recognizably a cheeseburger despite the French flourishes–the Dijon instead of brighter, brassier yellow mustard, the crusty baguette in place of the squishy white hamburger bun, the fries folded right into the sandwich. It does seem essentially American in some way, though the Hamburger patty may be German in origin, the mayonnaise Spanish, the baguette and mustard French, the frites Belgian and the ketchup Asian.

I tried to take it in a slightly more French direction with some Gruyère cheese and caramelized onions, and while it was delicious, the change in cheese and in condimentation didn’t make as much of an impact on the flavor as you might think. It’s a crusty baguette burger with fries in it–it tastes of beef and potato and all else is extra.

I had plans to take it further, to use a bleu d’Auvergne cheese with some horseradish, bacon, Russian dressing… you know, really dress it up. But it’s late in the month, and I’m tired, and it’s a cheeseburger in a baguette with fries that thankfully in France is not named after a weapon, and while it’s tasty I’m ready to move on.

There are some more interesting sandwiches ahead, and as always I hope you’ll return to read about them next month. See you then!