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Egg and Cheese Fondu

A quick egg and cheese mixture cooked in butter and served on hot buttered toast.

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

Egg and Cheese Fondu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Whip the egg and add 2 teaspoons of water.

  2. Mix in the grated cheese, mustard, pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Stir in the egg and cheese mixture, stirring continuously with a knife until smooth and thick.

  3. Serve on hot buttered toast.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Sets when heated, thickening the mixture into a smooth, spoonable fondue.
Grated cheese
Melts into the egg, adding richness and a creamy, savoury flavour.
Butter
Fat that coats the pan and adds richness to the cooked mixture.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the egg and cheese.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg and cheese mixture. Egg proteins set with heat, so stirring continuously over moderate heat keeps the mixture smooth and prevents curdling or lumps as it thickens.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, 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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