A croque-madame dressed up with crab

Every Francophile has eaten a croque-monsieur, the French rendition of a grilled cheese sandwich. You can get one in any cafe or buy one from a bakery, ready to heat and eat. It is, for all intents, a hot ham and cheese sandwich, the top spread with a layer of creamy béchamel sauce and grated cheese, then broiled until golden and bubbly.

You eat a croque-monsieur served on a little plate, at a little table or standing at the bar, with a knife and fork. A croque-madame is exactly the same, with a fried egg on top. Why is it madame when it has an egg? No one really knows. Some think it looks like a 19th-century chapeau, but evidently it wasn’t ever called madame until 1960. At any rate, “madame” sounds more elegant than “put an egg on it”.

Of course, some versions are better than others, but you are guaranteed a satisfying, hot, cheesy morsel, whatever the calibre. The old-fashioned benchmark croque-monsieur plants the ham and cheese between two thin white bread slices; then it is béchamel-slathered and bronzed in the oven. It is fetchingly displayed and perfectly adequate.

But in many Parisian cafés, a croque is an open-faced affair, built on a sturdy toasted raft of rustic hearth-baked whole-wheat pain au levain, the type of traditional, naturally fermented sourdough bread made famous in Paris by the artisan baker Lionel Poilâne. (This kind of bread is now relatively commonplace in artisanal US bakeries and perhaps taken for granted, but not so long ago, dedicated Americans had to order imported frozen pain Poilâne from a woman in Chicago or try to make their own.) To my mind, this full-flavoured bread makes a tastier croque.

I decided to make an open-faced version of croque-madame with crabmeat, which I thought would be a novel, entertaining and somewhat retro “fancy” approach to an elegant lunch. I intended to push it in a slightly Creole direction, adding cayenne, tarragon and chives. I even imagined tiny cocktail versions, topped with quail eggs.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing new under the Sun.

It seems someone had previously fiddled with the concept and invented crab toasties — unbeknown to me, a well-known, all-American, homey snack made with mayonnaise-dabbed crabmeat, cheddar cheese and English muffins. And types of crab toasties are evidently popular in the British Isles, as well, where they are found at home or in a pub. I have been either travelling in the wrong circles or living under a rock.

It is unclear, however, if there has ever been a sandwich called crabmeat croque-madame à la Créole. All you need is 500g of fresh crabmeat and an open mind.