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Cheese Fondu

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Fondu

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. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the boiled milk.

  3. Dissolve the flour in the cold milk.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the boiled milk mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Make the soufflé mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolks with salt, pepper, and grated cheese.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Fold the stiff egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep tin lined with buttered paper, allowing for rising.

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

  3. 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. Butter + milktop 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
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks trap air, lifting the fondue as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the boiled milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the cheese and egg.
Butter
Enriches the base with fat, adding richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Grated cheese
Provides the main flavour and, as it melts, body and richness to the mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture once thickened.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Stiff whites must be folded gently so the air bubbles stay intact. Overmixing deflates them, and the fondue will rise less in the oven.

“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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