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Fondue
(Switzerland.) Take as many eggs as there are people, add 1/3 of their weight in grated cheese, and 1/2 their weight in butter. Beat the eggs, white and yolks, together, add the cheese and butter, salt and pepper. Cook until it is thick, and pour into a deep dish. Add parsley if desired.
This is the older sense of fondue — scrambled eggs enriched with cheese and butter, not the pot of melted cheese and wine that later took the name. Everything hinges on gentle heat.
- Low heat, constant stirring"Cook until it is thick" means over the lowest possible heat, stirring without stopping, until it forms soft curds. If it is allowed to set fast the eggs will tighten and the butter will separate into a greasy pool.
- Working out the weightsA large egg out of the shell is about 1 3/4 oz (50 g). For six eggs, roughly 10 1/2 oz of egg, so about 3 1/2 oz grated cheese and 5 1/4 oz butter. Weigh rather than guess, since the ratio is the whole recipe.
- That much butter is deliberateHalf the weight of the eggs in butter reads as an error to modern eyes, but it is what this recipe specifies. Cutting it to a third or a quarter still works and gives a less rich result; below that you are making cheesy scrambled eggs.
- Which cheeseSwitzerland implies Gruyère or Emmental; a well-aged Gruyère gives the most flavour for the quantity. Grate it finely so it melts before the eggs overcook.
- Cold butter, added in piecesThe recipe does not say how the butter goes in; beating it in cold and cubed with the raw eggs, rather than melting it first, helps hold the mixture together and slows the cooking.
- Salt with careAged Gruyère is already salty. Season lightly at the start and correct at the end.
- ServingThe recipe reckons one egg per person, so six eggs serves six. It must go to the table straight from the pan; it stiffens and weeps as it cools and does not reheat.
The word simply means "melted", and until well into the twentieth century it covered any dish of cheese melted into something else; the communal pot of cheese thinned with white wine and kirsch, eaten on long forks, only became the standard meaning of the word abroad much later, helped along by Swiss promotion of it as a national dish.