Fondue

Fondue is a Swiss dish of melted cheese and wine, served in a communal pot kept hot over a small stove. Diners dip pieces of bread into it on long forks. The word means 'melted' in French, and the dish has become a symbol of Swiss identity and of shared meals.

History

Nobody knows exactly when it began. It is usually linked to the Alpine and Jura regions, where aged cheese and stale bread were everyday staples. Melting them together with wine produced a hot, filling meal for the winter months. The practice probably existed long before it was written down.

The oldest known recipe for the modern form of cheese fondue is found in a Zürich cookbook published in 1699, under a title meaning 'to cook cheese with wine'. It calls for grated cheese to be melted with wine, with bread dipped into it. Until the late nineteenth century, however, the name 'cheese fondue' often referred to an egg-based preparation, such as the one recorded by Vincent La Chapelle in 1735, which sat somewhere between scrambled eggs and a cheese soufflé. Brillat-Savarin described a version in 1825 and said he had encountered it in the canton of Vaud.

Around 1885, a prize-winning cookbook from a Zürich culinary exhibition included an egg-free recipe with white wine, close to the one still made today. In the 1930s the Swiss Cheese Union promoted fondue as a national dish to boost cheese sales, and after the Second World War it sent fondue sets to army regiments and event organisers. The dish reached Americans at the Alpine restaurant of the Swiss pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. From the 1950s the name spread to other dishes cooked in a communal pot, such as fondue bourguignonne, introduced by Konrad Egli at his Chalet Suisse restaurant in 1956, and later chocolate fondue.

Culture

Fondue is eaten in company, around a shared pot. The ritual of dipping bread and stirring the mixture in a figure of eight encourages long, relaxed conversation, which is why it is linked to gatherings of friends and winter celebrations. In Switzerland it is associated with mountains and winter sports, and official advertising in the twentieth century presented it as a way of uniting the country.

Each region uses its own cheeses. Blends of gruyère, comté, emmental or tomme de Savoie, flavoured with kirsch, a cherry brandy, are common. A toasted crust of cheese, called la religieuse, forms on the bottom of the pot and has the texture of a cracker. The meat version, fondue bourguignonne, involves frying pieces of beef or veal in hot oil and serving them with several sauces. Chocolate versions with fruit also exist. Melted cheese is part of the traditional cooking of Savoy, the Franche-Comté, the Aosta Valley and Piedmont, and in many countries fondue has become a dish for social celebrations.

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