Croque-Monsieur

Croque Monsieur or Madame

The croque monsieur is a baked or fried boiled ham and cheese sandwich. Traditionally, the bread is grilled separately and then dipped in whipped eggs. The sandwich is put together and then baked in the oven or fried in a pan to finish it up. Finally, it is topped with béchamel sauce – a very common and easy sauce made out of butter and milk thickened with a bit of flour. The croque monsieur is an extremely common option in French cafes and is a favorite snack.

The most common ingredients are white bread, gruyère cheese, and Spanish ham. Gruyère is a firm, slightly elastic mountain cheese with a slightly sweet, nutty flavour. Most importantly for this sandwich, it melts magnificently. Emmental is also common choice, admittedly, but is often considered less tasty since it is a much milder cheese than gruyère.

The name is based on the verb croquer ("to bite") and the word monsieur ("mister"). The sandwich's first recorded appearance on a Parisian café menu was in 1910 and has even been featured in famous novels and films since then!

There are, of course, variations on this recipe. The famous French chef Jacques Pepin makes a version using chicken instead of ham. Regional variations also include the croque provençal (which adds a tomato to the original sandwich) and the croque norvégien (which uses smoked salmon instead of ham). There are also many people who add in other flavors they happen to like, especially in the béchamel sauce; by itself, this sauce can taste a bit plain, but it is easy to add in spices, herbs, or even various other ingredients like mushrooms to give it a little more interest.

But by far the most common variation is the croque madame! Found in nearly as many cafes as the original, the croque madame includes a lightly fried or poached egg on top. It appeared on café menus for the first time just a few years after the croque monsieur and may have been the very first variation to be created. Many dictionaries suggest the name might refer to how the egg looks like an old fashioned hat women used to wear in some parts of France.