Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cheese Fondue
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Rub the butter and flour together in a bowl.
Melt the mixture and add the milk and beaten eggs.
Cook in the upper part of a chafing dish over boiling water until thick.
Finish and serve
For each cup of sauce, add a cup of grated cheese and cook for just a moment.
Pour the cheese sauce over rounds of toast.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,426 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Beaten eggs thicken the milk sauce as they set with gentle heat.
- Flour
- Flour combined with butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce.
- American cheese
- Melts into the sauce to give it a smooth, creamy, rich body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the thickeners set into.
The step that matters
Cook over boiling water until thick. Eggs can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot. Gentle, indirect heat from the water bath lets the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly.
“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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