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Cheese Fondue

A baked cheese fondue made with milk, butter, flour, cheese, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Fondue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk with the butter.

  2. Dissolve the flour in a little cold milk and stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the grated cheese and the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  2. Mix well and pour into a buttered dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately as it falls.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set the mixture into a light, airy custard-like structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable base that holds the cheese.
Grated cheese
Adds richness, fat and flavour, and melts into the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the milk and greases the dish.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour must be dissolved in cold milk first so it does not clump. Stirred into boiling milk it thickens evenly; added dry or lumpy, it stays grainy and the base will not be smooth.

“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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