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Cheese Fondue

A cheese fondue made with water, milk, bread crumbs, cheese, mustard, salt, cayenne, butter, and egg yolks, served on toast.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondue

  1. In a pot, combine water and milk.

  2. Add bread crumbs and heat until the mixture is hot.

  3. Stir in cheese and seasonings until smooth.

  4. Add slightly beaten egg yolks and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve on 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. 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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce, providing fat, body and rich flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the sauce.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Stir in cheese until smooth. Cheese proteins can clump or turn grainy if the mixture is too hot or the cheese is added all at once. Adding it gradually over gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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