The Complete Book of Cheese Part 13

Soak bread slices in hot beer. Melt thin slices of cheese with b.u.t.ter in iron frying pan, stir in a few spoonfuls of beer and a bit of prepared mustard. When smoothly melted, pour over the piping-hot, beer-soaked toast.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Chapter Six_

The Fondue

There is a conspiracy among the dictionary makers to take the heart out of the Fondue. Webster makes it seem no better than a collapsed souffle, with his definition:

Fondue. Also, erroneously, _fondu_. A dish made of melted cheese, b.u.t.ter, eggs, and, often, milk and bread crumbs.

Thorndike-Barnhart further demotes this dish, that for centuries has been one of the world's greatest, to "a combination of melted cheese, eggs and b.u.t.ter" and explains that the name comes from the French _fondre_, meaning melt. The latest snub is delivered by the up-to-date _Cook's Quiz_ compiled by TV culinary experts:

A baked dish with eggs, cheese, b.u.t.ter, milk and bread crumbs.

A baked dish, indeed! Yet the Fondue has added to the gaiety and inebriety of nations, if not of dictionaries. It has commanded the respect of the culinary great. Savarin, Boulestin, Andre Simon, all have hailed its heavenly consistency, all have been regaled with its creamy, nay velvety, smoothness.

A touch of garlic, a dash of kirsch, fresh ground black pepper, nutmeg, black pearl truffles of Bugey, red cayenne pepper, the luscious gravy of roast turkey--such little matters help to make an authentic dunking Fondue, not a baked Fondue, mind you. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin a century and a half ago brought the original "receipt" with him and spread it around with characteristic generosity during the two years of his exile in New York after the French Revolution. In his monumental _Physiologie du Gout_ he records an incident that occurred in 1795:

Whilst pa.s.sing through Boston ... I taught the restaurant-keeper Julien to make a _Fondue_, or eggs cooked with cheese. This dish, a novelty to the Americans, became so much the rage, that he (Julien) felt himself obliged, by way of thanks, to send me to New York the rump of one of those pretty little roebucks that are brought from Canada in winter, and which was declared exquisite by the chosen committee whom I convoked for the occasion.

As the great French gourmet, Savarin was born on the Swiss border (at Belley, in the fertile Province of Bugey, where Gertrude Stein later had a summer home), he no doubt ate Gruyere three times a day, as is the custom in Switzerland and adjacent parts. He sets down the recipe just as he got it from its Swiss source, the papers of Monsieur Trolliet, in the neighboring Canton of Berne:

Take as many eggs as you wish to use, according to the number of your guests. Then take a lump of good Gruyere cheese, weighing about a third of the eggs, and a nut of b.u.t.ter about half the weight of the cheese. (Since today's eggs in America weigh about 1-1/2 ounces apiece, if you start the Fondue with 8. your lump of good Gruyere would come to 1/4 pound and your b.u.t.ter to 1/8 pound.)

Break and beat the eggs well in a flat pan, then add the b.u.t.ter and the cheese, grated or cut in small pieces.

Place the pan on a good fire and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture is fairly thick and soft; put in a little or no salt, according to the age of the cheese, and a good deal of pepper, for this is one of the special attributes of this ancient dish.

Let it be placed on the table in a hot dish, and if some of the best wines be produced, and the bottle pa.s.sed quite freely, a marvelous effect will be beheld.

This has long been quoted as the proper way to make the national dish of Switzerland. Savarin tells of hearing oldsters in his district laugh over the Bishop of Belley eating his Fondue with a spoon instead of the traditional fork, in the first decade of the 1700's. He tells, too, of a Fondue party he threw for a couple of his septuagenarian cousins in Paris "about the year 1801."

The party was the result of much friendly taunting of the master: "By Jove, Jean, you have been bragging for such a long time about your Fondues, you have continually made our mouths water. It is high time to put a stop to all this. We will come and breakfast with you some day and see what sort of thing this dish is."

Savarin invited them for ten o'clock next day, started them off with the table laid on a "snow white cloth, and in each one's place two dozen oysters with a bright golden lemon. At each end of the table stood a bottle of sauterne, carefully wiped, excepting the cork, which showed distinctly that it had been in the cellar for a long while....

After the oysters, which were quite fresh, came some broiled kidneys, a _terrine_ of _foie gras_, a pie with truffles, and finally the Fondue. The different ingredients had all been a.s.sembled in a stewpan, which was placed on the table over a chafing dish, heated with spirits of wine.

"Then," Savarin is quoted, "I commenced operations on the field of battle, and my cousins did not lose a single one of my movements.

They were loud in the praise of this preparation, and asked me to let them have the receipt, which I promised them...."

This Fondue breakfast party that gave the nineteenth century such a good start was polished off with "fruits in season and sweets, a cup of genuine mocha, ... and finally two sorts of liqueurs, one a spirit for cleansing, and the other an oil for softening."

This primitive Swiss Cheese Fondue is now prepared more elaborately in what is called:

Neufchatel Style

2-1/2 cups grated imported Swiss 1-1/2 tablespoons flour 1 clove of garlic 1 cup dry white wine Crusty French "flute" or hard rolls cut into big mouthfuls, handy for dunking 1 jigger kirsch Salt Pepper Nutmeg

The cheese should be shredded or grated coa.r.s.ely and mixed well with the flour. Use a chafing dish for cooking and a small heated ca.s.serole for serving. Hub the bottom and sides of the blazer well with garlic, pour in the wine and heat to bubbling, just under boiling. Add cheese slowly, half a cup at a time, and stir steadily in one direction only, as in making Welsh Rabbit. Use a silver fork. Season with very little salt, always depending on how salty the cheese is, but use plenty of black pepper, freshly ground, and a touch of nutmeg. Then pour in the kirsch, stir steadily and invite guests to dunk their forked bread in the dish or in a smaller preheated ca.s.serole over a low electric or alcohol burner on the dining table. The trick is to keep the bubbling melted cheese in rhythmic motion with the fork, both up and down and around and around.

The dunkers stab the hunks of crusty French bread through the soft part to secure a firm hold in the crust, for if your bread comes off in dunking you pay a forfeit, often a bottle of wine.

The dunking is done as rhythmically as the stirring, guests taking regular turns at twirling the fork to keep the cheese swirling. When this "chafing dish cheese custard," as it has been called in England, is ready for eating, each in turn thrusts in his fork, sops up a mouthful with the bread for a sponge and gives the Fondue a final stir, to keep it always moving in the same direction. All the while the heat beneath the dish keeps it gently bubbling.

Such a Neufchatel party was a favorite of King Edward VII, especially when he was stepping out as the Prince of Wales. He was as fond of Fondue as most of the great gourmets of his day and preferred it to Welsh Rabbit, perhaps because of the wine and kirsch that went into it.

At such a party a little heated wine is added if the Fondue gets too thick. When finally it has cooked down to a crust in the bottom of the dish, this is forked out by the host and divided among the guests as a very special dividend.

Any dry white wine will serve in a pinch, and the Switzerland Cheese a.s.sociation, in broadcasting this cla.s.sical recipe, points out that any dry rum, slivovitz, or brandy, including applejack, will be a valid subst.i.tute for the kirsch. To us, applejack seems specially suited, when we stop to consider our native taste that has married apple pie to cheese since pioneer times.

In culinary usage fondue means "melting to an edible consistency" and this, of course, doesn't refer to cheese alone, although we use it chiefly for that.

In France Fondue is also the common name for a simple dish of eggs scrambled with grated cheese and b.u.t.ter and served very hot on toasted bread, or filled into fancy paper cases, quickly browned on top and served at once. The reason for this is that all baked Fondues fall as easily and as far as Souffles, although the latter are more noted for this failing. There is a similarity in the soft fluffiness of both, although the Fondues are always more moist. For there is a stiff, stuffed-shirt buildup around any Souffle, suggesting a dressy dinner, while Fondue started as a self-service dunking bowl.

Our modern tendency is to try to make over the original French Fondue on the Welsh Rabbit model--to turn it into a sort of French Rabbit.

Although we know that both Gruyere and Emmentaler are what we call Swiss and that it is impossible in America to duplicate the rich Alpine flavor given by the mountain herbs, we are inclined to try all sorts of domestic cheeses and mixtures thereof. But it's best to stick to Savarin's "lump of Gruyere" just as the neighboring French and Italians do. It is interesting to note that this Swiss Alpine cooking has become so international that it is credited to Italy in the following description we reprint from _When Madame Cooks_, by an Englishman, Eric Weir:

Fondue a l'Italienne

This is one of those egg dishes that makes one feel really grateful to hens. From its name it originated probably in Italy, but it has crossed the Alps. I have often met it in France, but only once in Italy.

First of all, make a very stiff white sauce with b.u.t.ter, flour and milk. The sauce should be stiff enough to allow the wooden spoon to stand upright or almost.

Off the fire, add yolks of eggs and 4 ounces of grated Gruyere cheese. Mix this in well with the white sauce and season with salt, pepper and some grated nutmeg. Beat whites of egg firm. Add the whites to the preparation, stir in, and pour into a pudding basin.

Take a large saucepan and fill half full of water. Bring to a boil, and then place the pudding basin so that the top of the basin is well out of the water. Allow to boil gently for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Renew the boiling water from time to time, as it evaporates, and take care that the water, in boiling, does not bubble over the mixture.

Test with a knife, as for a cake, to see if it is cooked. When the knife comes out clean, take the basin out of the water and turn the Fondue out on a dish. It should be fairly firm and keep the shape of the basin.

Sprinkle with some finely chopped ham and serve hot.

The imported Swiss sometimes is cubed instead of grated, then marinated for four or five hours in dry white wine, before being melted and liquored with the schnapps. This can be pleasantly adopted here in:

All-American Fondue

1 pound imported Swiss cheese, cubed 3/4 cup scuppernong or other American white wine 1-1/2 jiggers applejack

After marinating the Swiss cubes in the wine, simply melt together over hot water, stir until soft and creamy, add the applejack and dunk with fingers of toast or your own to a chorus of "All Bound Round with a Woolen String."

Of course, this can be treated as a mere vinous Welsh Rabbit and poured over toast, to be accompanied by beer. But wine is the thing, for the French Fondue is to dry wine what the Rabbit is to stale ale or fresh beer.