Chef Fred Schmidt of Louisville’s Brown Hotel invented the hot brown in the 1920s to provide partygoers from the hotel ballroom an alternative to their usual ham-and-eggs wee-hour meal. As he made it, the sandwich consisted of sliced turkey on white toast topped with Mornay sauce and Parmesan cheese, broiled until bubbly. When removed from the broiler, the top was crisscrossed with bacon strips and lengths of pimiento pepper. The hotel’s name became affixed to the dish, which has since become a Kentucky trademark, available in many alternative configurations: with ham in addition to the turkey, with tomatoes instead of pimientos, with crab meat instead of turkey. There are even hamburger hot browns and vegetarian hot browns. The traditional version remains a featured attraction on the menu of what is now the Camberly Brown Hotel.
Louisville’s hot brown, as made at Lynne’s Paradise Café.