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Cheese Fondue
1 cup grated cheese 2 teaspoons butter 1 cup milk 1 cup soft bread-crums 1/3 teaspoon salt 3 eggs Cayenne Scald the milk and pour it over the crums, then add the butter or butter substitute, the cheese and seasonings. Beat the egg-yolks slightly and add to the mixture, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites and turn the mixture into a greased baking-dish. Set in a pan of water and bake in a slow oven (300 degrees F.) until firm on top. One cup of cooked rice or other cereal may be substituted for the bread-crums.
This is the American sense of "fondue" — a baked cheese pudding set in a water bath, closer to a loose soufflé than to anything melted in a pot. The original gives the oven temperature but no time, so the doneness cue matters most.
- The hinge: gentle heat, water bathThe custard is egg-thickened, so it must stay at 300°F in a pan of hot water. Higher heat curdles the eggs and the cheese weeps oil, leaving a grainy layer at the bottom.
- TimingIn a greased 1 1/2-quart dish, expect 45 to 60 minutes. It is done when the top is set and lightly browned and a knife slid into the center comes out clean; the middle should still wobble as a unit, not slosh.
- CheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese"; a firm cheddar is the likeliest reading for an American book of this date, though nothing in the text specifies it. One cup grated is roughly 3 to 4 ounces. Avoid pre-shredded cheese, which carries anti-caking starch and melts stringily.
- Butter substituteThe phrase most likely means oleomargarine, which was widely used at the time. Butter is fine, and two teaspoons is a small enough amount that the choice barely registers.
- Bread-crumbs"Soft crums" means fresh bread torn or grated, not dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more milk and give a heavy, pasty result. Use a cup of loosely packed fresh crumbs from day-old white bread.
- CayenneNo quantity is given. A pinch — about 1/16 teaspoon — is enough to sharpen the cheese without reading as heat.
- Folding the whitesLet the milk-and-crumb base cool to warm before adding the yolks, or they will set on contact. Fold the beaten whites in last with a few broad strokes; overworking them costs the dish its lift.
- YieldServes four as a light main dish with a salad, or six as a side. It falls as it cools, so bring it straight from oven to table.
- The rice variationSubstituting a cup of cooked rice or other cooked cereal makes a denser, more casserole-like dish. It still wants the water bath; judge it by the same doneness cue rather than by the clock.
New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, the Butterick pattern company's household magazine, and its cheese chapter reflects a period when American cooks were taught to treat cheese as a protein substitute for meat rather than as a course of its own. "Fondue" in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English-language cookbooks routinely meant this sort of baked cheese-and-crumb custard, not the Swiss pot of melted cheese and wine that later claimed the word outright; recipes under that title appear in American books well before Swiss fondue became familiar here. The water bath and the folded egg whites place it in the same family as the cheese soufflés and "cheese puddings" of the era, and the note that cooked rice or cereal may stand in for the bread crumbs is a thrift instruction of exactly the kind these magazines printed, turning yesterday's leftover cereal into today's supper.