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Dessert

How to Make a Fondue

A simple cheese fondue made by whisking eggs, Gruyère cheese, and butter until thick and soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

How to Make a Fondue

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break and beat the eggs in a saucepan.

  2. Add the grated cheese and butter to the eggs.

  3. Place the saucepan on the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until thick and soft.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken as they heat, giving the fondue its body and structure.
Gruyère cheese
Adds savory, nutty flavor and melts into the eggs to enrich the texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring over the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so high heat or no stirring can scramble the eggs and make the fondue grainy. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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