A Classic in Parisian bistros, the Croque-Monsieur has its origins in the French capital. Discover the origin of this strange name.

The appearance of the croque-monsieur in France

In its most famous form, that is to say made of square sandwich bread, garnished with ham and covered with cheese au gratin, the croque-monsieur was offered for the first time in 1910 in one of the brasseries on the boulevard des Capucines. According to legend, Michel Lunarca, a bistro owner who lacked bread to make his sandwiches of the day, would have then decided to use sandwich bread, lightly cooked to keep the crunch of a baguette.

A Classic in Parisian bistros, the Croque-Monsieur has its origins in the French capital.
A Croque-Monsieur, a classic of Parisian bistrots – Copyright Wikipedia

Human meat

He would then have replied jokingly to his customers who asked him about the origin of the ham, that it was human meat. “Sir’s meat,” he reportedly said. A joke that became legendary, when he included the croque-monsieur on his menu the next day. In 1919, the writer Marcel Proust referred to the sandwich in his famous book “In the shade of young girls in bloom”: we had stopped, my grandmother and I, to exchange a few words with Mme de Villeparisis who told us that she had ordered “croque-monsieur” and “eggs with cream” for us at the hotel. ».

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