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Cheese Fondij

A creamy cheese sauce served hot over biscuits or crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Fondij

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondue

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk and stir until the sauce boils.

  4. Mix in the bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, and cheese, stirring rapidly until the cheese melts.

  5. Season with salt, cayenne, and French mustard.

  6. Remove from heat and quickly beat in the egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on heated pilot biscuits or saltines.

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. 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 to give it its body and rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it is beaten in off the heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Bread crumbs
Adds body and helps soak up liquid, giving the fondue a thicker texture.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so if the sauce is still boiling hot when it is added, the yolk can scramble or curdle. Removing the pan from the heat and beating quickly keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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