The Horseshoe Sandwich

The Horseshoe Sandwich is the pride of Illinois. Its invention is credited to Chef Joe Schweska at the Leland Hotel in Springfield, Illinois, in 1928. As legend has it, a hungry hotel guest came in as the kitchen was closing one night and Joe quickly put together a meal using things he had left on hand. That same day, Joe’s wife, Elizabeth, had given him a recipe for classic Welsh rarebit (an eighteenth-century British cheese sauce) to use in a menu special. When Schweska created an open-faced sandwich for the guest using thick toast, a slice of hot ham, a mound of shoestring fried potatoes, and a cascade of cheese sauce, a legendary sandwich was born.