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Cheese Fondue

A hot cheese mixture with milk, bread crumbs, and cheese, finished with egg and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Fondue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Add the cheese and bread crumbs, stirring until perfectly smooth.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg, salt, and nutmeg if desired.

Rest

  1. Set aside until tea time.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered dish and place in the oven until browned.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that melts the cheese into a smooth mixture.
Cheese
Provides fat, richness, and the main flavor, and melts into a creamy texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it holds its body.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets when baked, giving it a firmer structure.

The step that matters

Baking until browned. The egg sets and the cheese browns in the oven. Baking too long or at too high a heat can make the egg tough and the cheese oily or dry, so watch the surface closely.

“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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