The Leland’s grandeur gradually faded, and it eventually closed. Its only enduring legacy is the horseshoe (five horseshoes were the Red Lion Room’s last meals, served even as the electricity was being cut off in October, 1970).
Over the years several chefs have claimed credit for inventing the horseshoe, most notably Steve Tomko, who worked at in the Leland’s kitchen in the 1920s and eventually became chef at Wayne’s Red Coach. But multiple corroborating documents in Leone’s file all point to one man: Joe Schweska. Some of those and others also confirm that my grandmother’s recipe is indeed the original, and attest to horseshoes’ original components and construction. There were surprises in the file, too, the biggest being that since Schweska created the first horseshoes in 1928, the original sauce was made with “near beer.” (Prohibition ended in 1929.)
In the State Journal’s 1938 Christmas edition, Robert Woods writes “At the Leland Hotel, Chief Chef Joe Schweska has his own recipe for Welsh rarebit sauce which he has been graciously giving to hundreds who have asked for it in the years since he has been serving it.
“Chef Schweska has a score of years in the kitchen behind him and estimates that he serves six gallons of his rarebit sauce a day at the Leland.”
The article continues with Schweska describing how he uses the sauce for horseshoes (though not naming them as such), and then giving the recipe.
Welsh rarebit is a classic U.K. dish of toast covered with cheese sauce. Some say the term “rarebit” is derived from “rabbit” and legend has it that the dish was created by poachers who came home empty-handed. Another regional specialty based on Welsh rarebit is the Kentucky Hot Brown, created at Louisville’s Brown Hotel in 1926. It consists of toast topped with sliced turkey, bacon and tomato slices smothered in Mornay sauce, traditionally made with Swiss-type cheese. There seems to be no evidence that Hot Browns and Horseshoes have a connection of their own.
In an undated column, Bob Gonko, food jounalist and editor for the S J-R for 41 years (1955 to 1996) writes:
“….new information has turned up regarding Springfield’s Horseshoe, our unique sandwich with the cheese sauce topping.
“Tony Wables Sr. worked in the late 1920s as a teen-ager at the old Leland Hotel with Augie Schilling and Steve Tomko:
“‘I was 18 and Steve was 17, I think – we were just kids – and Joe Schweska, the chef at the Leland, taught us and Augie how to cook. I started out as a pan man, a pot washer.
“‘When Joe Schweska started the horseshoe at the Leland in 1928 or 1929, he used ‘near beer’ in the cheese sauce or Welsh Rarebit because it was during Prohibition and you couldn’t legally get alcohol.
“‘In the original horseshoe, the French fries were wedges. You’d take a potato, cut it three times, then use eight of these wedges to represent the nails of the horseshoe.
“‘Now,’ said Wables, ‘you use long branch, julienne, shoe string cuts for French fries. The horseshoe [made with] ham came first,’ he said. ‘Then Joe started adding chicken [to the meat options], then the bacon and tomato.
“‘If you use a good Cheddar cheese, then you have a good sauce. And we always used beer in the sauce.
“‘The thing I liked about Joe Schweska is that he taught me everything I know about cooking,’ said Wables.”
The horseshoe sandwich begins with two pieces of toast on a preheated platter, covering the toast with an entrée. Top with the cheese sauce and surround with French fries, explains Gonko in the article.
What’sCookinginAmerica.net may have gotten the ingredients for classic horseshoes
wrong (thick toast, thick-sliced meat, white cheddar sauce) but its 2008 first-person account of Springfield resident Tom McGee confirms other documents and says that though Schweska created horseshoes, the initial idea was his wife’s:
“What knowledge I have of the Horseshoe Sandwich, I have from my deceased brother-in-law, Joseph E. Schweska, Jr., and to a lesser degree from personally knowing Chef Joe Schweska. My brother-in-law often helped his father after school or when special events or parties were being held at the Leland Hotel.”