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Cheese Fondu

A baked cheese fondue made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, and grated cheese, topped with crumbs and browned before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Fondu

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Stir a pinch of baking soda into the milk.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  3. Beat in the eggs, melted butter, pepper, salt, and mace.

  4. Finally, mix in the grated cheese.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a pudding dish and pour in the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle the top with fine bread crumbs.

  3. Cover and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Uncover and brown quickly.

  5. Serve immediately as it will fall while cooling.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the baked dish its structure as they cook.
Dry cheese
Provides rich flavor and fat, and helps the mixture firm up as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk to thicken the mixture and add body to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and crumbs set into a custard.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown quickly. Egg custards turn rubbery and weep if overbaked, and the top can dry out. Browning briefly after the covered bake sets the surface while keeping the interior tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, cheese, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, cheese, egg, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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