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Cheese Fondu

A melted cheese mixture served with toast or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Fondu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondue

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the milk, bread crumbs, cheese, and dry mustard. Season with cayenne pepper and stir constantly.

  3. Just before serving, add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast or crackers.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce and provides the main flavor and creamy body.
Eggs
Add richness and help thicken the fondue as they set with gentle heat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the fondue body and a thicker, smoother texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that melts the cheese into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the cheese sauce smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs just before serving. Eggs thicken when heated, so if they are added too early or the heat is too high they can scramble or curdle. Adding them at the end, over gentle heat while stirring, keeps the fondue smooth and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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