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Cheese Fondue

A baked cheese fondue made with bread crumbs, American cheese, spices, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Fondue

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Layer bread crumbs in a pudding dish.

  2. Cover with small pieces of American cheese and season with coarse sea salt, paprika, dry mustard, and lumps of butter.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is almost full.

  4. Beat the eggs and add the milk, then pour over the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Cheese + milktop 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 when baked, binding the layers into a custard-like body.
Milk
Adds liquid that cooks with the eggs into a soft, moist custard.
American cheese
Melts into the layers, giving the dish its creamy, savoury body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the egg and milk mixture, giving the dish structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps browning on top.

The step that matters

Pour the egg and milk mixture over the top. The eggs must be fully beaten into the milk so they set evenly as a custard. Unbeaten egg can leave streaks or pockets of uncooked white, and pouring over the layers lets the liquid soak down through the crumbs before baking.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cheese, butter, egg, milk. 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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