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Cheese Fondants
For twelve fondants make a white sauce with two soupspoons of flour and milk. Add to it the yolks of three eggs. Stir in four ounces of mixed Gruyere cheese, and Parmesan, grated very finely. Add at the end the juice of half a lemon, and a dust of cayenne. Let it all grow cold. Then make little balls with this paste and roll them in breadcrumbs. Throw them in a pan of boiling fat, where they must remain till they are a good golden color. Drain them, keeping them hot, and serve quickly.
A Belgian cheese croquette in miniature, and the whole thing hangs on how stiff the base is and how thoroughly it chills. Everything else is straightforward.
- The hinge: a very thick baseThis paste must be stiff enough to roll cold, so the white sauce needs to be far thicker than a pouring béchamel — closer to a pastry-cream consistency that pulls away from the pan in a mass. With two tablespoons of flour, keep the milk to about half a cup and cook it out well; more milk than that and the balls will slump and burst in the fat.
- SoupspoonSoupspoon is best read as a tablespoon, roughly 15 ml. Two of flour is a reasonable amount for twelve small fondants.
- Butter is assumedThe original says only flour and milk, but a white sauce of the period began with a roux. Use about two tablespoons of butter to the two of flour and cook the paste a minute or two before the milk goes in.
- The yolksBeat them in off the heat, then return the pan to low heat and stir for a minute so they thicken and cook through rather than scrambling. The mixture will be fried afterwards, but the yolks bind better if they are set now.
- Chilling"Let it all grow cold" means genuinely cold — spread the paste in a shallow dish, cover, and refrigerate at least four hours or overnight. Warm paste is the usual reason croquettes disintegrate.
- CoatingThe original rolls the balls in breadcrumbs alone, which works if the paste is stiff and thoroughly cold. If the crumbs will not cling, roll each ball in flour, then beaten egg, then fine dry breadcrumbs, and chill the coated balls again for half an hour before frying.
- Frying temperature"Boiling fat" means deep fat hot enough to fry briskly, which in modern terms is about 350-375F. Cooler and the fondants soak and split; hotter and the crust colors before the centre softens. Two to three minutes gives the golden color called for; fry in small batches.
- CheeseFour ounces of Gruyère and Parmesan together, grated on the finest holes so it melts smoothly into the sauce. Pre-grated Parmesan with anti-caking starch will make the paste gritty.
- Yield and servingTwelve fondants serve four as a first course or six with drinks. They must go out hot and immediately — held even ten minutes, the crust softens and the interior stiffens.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in England in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion, and its plainness reflects that: dishes recalled from memory by cooks far from their own kitchens, with quantities often left to the reader's judgement. These "fondants" are what a Belgian menu would more usually call croquettes au fromage — the same thick cheese-enriched panade, chilled, breaded and deep-fried, that remains a fixture of café and brasserie menus in Belgium today, often built on Gruyère or, by some accounts, a local Chimay-style cheese. The name is descriptive rather than technical: fondant here simply means the thing melts in the middle, and has nothing to do with the sugar paste of English confectionery or with Swiss fondue. The lemon juice and cayenne are the period signature, cutting the richness of a fried cheese mixture.