Home › Croquettes, Etc › Cheese Fondu
Cheese Fondu
One cup of fine bread crumbs, two cups of sweet milk, half pound of grated cheese, three eggs whipped light, one small teaspoonful of butter, pepper, salt and a pinch of soda dissolved in hot water, then stirred in the milk; add butter, eggs, seasoning and last the cheese. Butter a nicelooking baking dish; pour the mixture into it; strew over the top some fine, stale bread crumbs. Bake in a quick oven. Serve at once.
This is a baked cheese pudding rather than a Swiss-style dipping fondue, and it behaves like a loose soufflé: it rises in the oven and settles within minutes of coming out. The one thing to get right is the oven — hot enough to set and brown quickly, and the dish served straight from it.
- Oven temperatureA "quick oven" is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. The recipe gives no time; at that heat a shallow dish will likely set in roughly 20-25 minutes, and a deeper one will take longer and is more likely to stay wet in the middle.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh unsoured whole milk, as distinct from the buttermilk or clabbered milk also kept in a period kitchen. Ordinary whole milk is what you want.
- The pinch of sodaDissolved soda would have helped neutralise any acidity in milk that had begun to turn and reduce the risk of the cheese curdling into strings, though the recipe does not say why it is there. With fresh milk it is unnecessary, and more than a genuine pinch will leave a soapy taste.
- The cheeseUnspecified "grated cheese" in an American book of this period would most often have been a firm factory cheddar. Grate it fine and stir it in last, as directed.
- Bread crumbsThe recipe specifies stale crumbs only for the topping, where they brown and stay crisp; the cup inside is simply "fine bread crumbs," and soft fresh crumbs will absorb the milk more readily.
- Eggs"Whipped light" means beaten whole eggs, well aerated but not to stiff peaks. Most of the lift in this dish comes from them.
- ButterOne small teaspoon is a very lean hand by modern standards; a tablespoon, melted, will give a richer result.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest about four as a light supper or luncheon dish, six as a side. Bring it to the table immediately -- it deflates and stiffens as it cools.
"Fondu" in nineteenth-century American and English cookbooks often meant not the Swiss communal pot of melted cheese and wine but a baked cheese dish, from the French fondu, melted, and it sat alongside cheese ramekins, welsh rarebit and cheese straws as a savoury course or a meatless supper. Placing it under "Croquettes, Etc." is telling, associating it with the small made dishes of the late-Victorian household kitchen. The insistence on serving at once is a reminder of how briefly an egg-risen cheese pudding holds its height.