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Fondue Au Fromage

A creamy cheese fondue made with cream, potato flour, eggs, and grated Gruyère or Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parmesan cheese work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 572 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fondue Au Fromage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream and potato flour with salt; bring to a boil.

  2. Once thickened, remove from heat and stir in egg yolks and cheese.

Fold and cook

  1. Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and cover with a lid.

  3. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes until set, then 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. Potato + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream or milk
Provides liquid and richness, so the base is smooth and creamy when heated.
Potato flour
Thickens the liquid as it boils, giving the base body to hold the cheese.
Egg yolks
Add richness and, as they set with gentle heat, help bind the mixture.
Gruyère or parmesan cheese
Supplies the main flavour and melts into the base to make it stringy and savoury.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and give it a airy, puffed texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped to stiff peaks and folded gently; overmixing deflates the air that lightens the fondue, and the base should be cool enough that the whites do not cook on contact.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, egg, parmesan cheese):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, egg, parmesan cheese. 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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