Fondue, the Swiss National Dish With Timeless Appeal By Peggy Trowbridge Filippone Updated December 31, 2016. Fondue headlined suburban American theme parties in the 1960s, then pretty quickly fell out of favor, as fads so often do. Americans briefly rediscovered the communal meal in the early '90s, albeit with a more modern and health-conscious approach to the recipes. But if everything old eventually becomes new again, that fondue pot set you stashed in the basement might be due for a second revival. Fondue Origin The idea of fondue likely calls to mind the style that originated during the 1800s in the Swiss Alps as a way to use hardened cheese and stale bread during the winter months. Deriving from the French verb fondre, meaning "to melt," fondue was a classic peasant dish made fashionable across the country after World War I by the Swiss Cheese Union. French gastronome Brillat-Savarin mentioned fondue in his 19th-century writings.

But fondue-like dishes originated in cultures around the world, such as Asian hot pots in which diners cook chunks of meat, seafood or vegetables in a communal pot of bubbling oil or steaming broth. Mexico's queso fundido resembles the cheesy Swiss dish, though served with tortillas, while bagna cauda in Italy relies on pureed anchovies for texture and flavor and is typically accompanied by vegetables. Chef Konrad Egli of New York's Chalet Suisse Restaurant gets the credit for chocolate fondue, which he developed in 1964 to support a marketing effort by Swiss company Toblerone. Fondue Today Traditional Swiss fondue combines Emmenthaler and/or Gruyere cheese and wine, melted in a communal pot. A cherry brandy called kirsch gets added to the mixture, which becomes a dip for pieces of stale bread and crusts. In Switzerland, cooks in different regions produce fondue with other local melting cheeses and variations on flavorings. But they all agree that the best bite develops at the bottom of the pot during the course of the meal. The crusty slab of cheese, called le religieuse, gets reverentially scrapped off by fondue connoisseurs and shared around the table.

Those same connoisseurs (and hopefully any good cheese fondue host) will tell you to drink white wine, kirsch or herbal tea with your meal -- and nothing else. Those in the know say beer or juice or even water can cause the cheese in your belly to coagulate, which doesn't sound like a pleasant end to the meal. Chocolate fondue might seem like a foregone conclusion, but the editors at Bon Appetit don't recommend the high-cholesterol combination. A few slices of fresh pineapple make a much better choice for dessert because the natural enzymes help with digestion. You don't even need a special fondue pot to serve a meal for family or friends. A slow cooker makes a convenient substitute and keeps the cheese warm. You can also melt the cheese in a double boiler on an electric hot plate, or prepare it on the stove and transfer it to a chaffing dish. More about Fondue: BBC - Travel - Tracing fondue’s mysterious origins Food & Drink Tracing fondue’s mysterious origins Follow the epic history of this quintessentially Swiss dish to Geneva and discover the best spots to sample the bubbling dish of melted cheese.

By Caitlin Zaino 13 February 2013 After spending a day on the snow-covered Alps, convening with friends around a pot of bubbling fondue while sipping a glass of chilled white wine, is the ultimate après ski. And whether you are visiting a family-run restaurant in a mountain village or hitting the cobblestone streets of Geneva’s Old Town, fondue is as ubiquitous in Switzerland as chocolate or watches. Related article: Mini guide to activities in Switzerland The story of fondue Digging into a fondue may seem clichéd, but this quintessential Swiss dish has an epic, if ambiguous, history. Its first mention dates as far back as Homer’s Iliad from around 800 to 725 BC, where it was described as a mixture of goat’s cheese, wine and flour. In the late 17th Century, a Swiss cookbook, Kochbuch der Anna Margaretha Gessner, makes note of cooking cheese with wine. Others say peasants in the Swiss mountains created the dish as a way to make use of leftover bread and cheese during colder months when fresh produce was scarce.

But modern fondue – melted cheese and wine set in a pot over an open flame – dates to the late 1800s, with roots in the French Rhône-Alpes region near the Geneva border. Fast forward to 1930 when the Swiss Cheese Union declared it the country’s national dish – and the Swiss have not looked back since. Fondue’s hazy history means that following its food trail is a challenge, but its connection to French-speaking Switzerland makes Geneva a good place to start. Walk through the winding streets of the city’s medieval Old Town in the winter and the distinct smell of cheese wafts out of restaurants and apartment windows. Here, fondue is almost invariably moitié-moitié – half-and-half – made with gruyère and Fribourg-style vacherin (cow’s milk) cheeses. A hard, nutty cow’s milk cheese, gruyère is one of Switzerland’s most famous, originating from the town of Gruyères, set on the Alpine foothills in the canton of Fribourg.

Also from cow’s milk, vacherin from Fribourg is a firm cheese with an acidic-meets-creamy-and-woodsy flavour, not unlike an Italian fontina. Traditionally, the two varieties are grated and melted together with a hint of garlic, a splash of white wine and a touch of kirsch, cherry brandy. The resulting dish is served in an earthenware pot called a caquelon, which sits above a portable stove to ensure a constantly bubbling mixture, and long forks dip and swirl country-style bread into the pot. This is a communal affair so be ready to share. Fondue is for locals For a quintessential fondue experience, make like a local and head to La Buvette des Bains , a restaurant at the Bains des Paquis . Jutting out onto Geneva’s iconic Lac Leman, this is the city’s public beach and bathhouse, dating from the 1930s. Between September and April each year, the women’s changing rooms are converted into a covered restaurant where rows of communal tables and benches are flanked on either side by the lake. Walking along the dock to the restaurant, the pungent smell of cheese and burning wood is immediately apparent.

Order your fondue at the outside counter with a customary assiette Valasianne, a plate of pickles, pearl onions and dried meats from Switzerland’s Valais region in the upper Rhône Valley. Hot tea or cold white wine, preferably chasselas – known locally as fendant – are the only drinks locals will pair with fondue; rumour has it that anything else promises a case of indigestion. Packed in tightly at narrow benches, you will almost certainly rub elbows with your neighbours. Once seated, prepare to dig into one of the best fondues the city has to offer. Large pieces of crusty bread are dipped into the dish, made here with copious amounts of local sparkling white wine and garlic. Waiters will happily scrape up the amber crust of golden cheese that sits the bottom of the pot and cut it for the table to share. Moving away from the lake, up the winding, steep hills of Geneva’s Old Town, sits another local favourite, Les Armures . Set inside a building from the 16th Century, this wooden-beamed, rustic restaurant is nestled below the Hotel Les Armures , one of the city’s finest. Here the food is unpretentious and the fondue memorable.

Enjoy it on the restaurant’s terrace on cool, autumn days, or cosily inside when the air gets frigid. For the perfect after-dinner delight, end the evening with a walk through the historic Old Town along the city’s centuries-old walls and past the Cathédrale St-Pierre , where the founding figure of the Protestant religion, John Calvin, gave weekly sermons in the 1540s. Make like a tourist Though Geneva is a good place to start your fondue trail, following its path will inevitably take you outside of the city too. At Gare Cornavin , the city’s main train station, you can hop on a train heading northeast and in less than 130km you will find yourself in the picturesque village of Gruyères. Tucked between the grand Mount Moléson and rolling hills dotted with cows, this is where some of the best Swiss cheese has been created for centuries. Stone fountains, cobbled streets and geranium-lined shutters evoke a fairytale setting. But it is the cheese you are after.

At the Fromagerie d’Alpage , witness the fromager, or cheese maker, bring gruyère and other classics to life over a steaming cauldron and open fire. History and culinary tradition runs deep here. Gruyère cheese is said to have been enjoyed by the Romans and was given its namesake as early as 1602. To make it, fresh milk from grass or hay-fed cows within a 20km radius is poured raw into a copper pot and heated until it begins to curdle. Once a solid layer has formed at the top of the cauldron, the curds are cut then separated from the whey, pressed into a large mould and set to age in a high-humidity cellar. The rind is washed and salted throughout the aging process, which lasts anywhere from six months to three years. The older it is, the sharper the flavour, with strong notes of hazelnut and buttery caramel. It is hard to avoid the temptation to linger and sample the fromagerie’s creamy in-house fondue, but head to the village centre and snag a table at Le Chalet instead.

This restaurant may be touristy, but a fondue here, followed by meringues dunked into Gruyères’ infamous double cream, promises to satiate every dairy desire. Bringing the tradition home Ask the Swiss where to find the best fondue, and they will often give the same answer: at home. For an authentic blend of cheeses, visit the dairy trucks that open their doors at Geneva farmers’ markets. On Saturdays, stop by the bustling marché (market) which lines the streets just outside the city’s main food market, Halle de Rive , and stroll around the produce and flower vendors that sit beside dairy stands. Often, they will have their own fondue mix, already grated and packaged, ready for you to take home. An earthenware pot is just as easy to pick up, though bypass the ones in the tourist shops. Follow locals and duck into a department store for an authentic and reliable fondue set, typically painted red and splashed with white crosses in homage to the Swiss flag. At the upscale shop Globus , a wide selection of pots is on offer, often with beautiful vintage detailing.

In their downstairs food store, fendant wines and fondue blends are available, including those with flakes of truffle or laced with Champagne. A Swiss icon Where ever you are in Switzerland, particularly come ski season, a remarkable fondue experience is never far. A rich, buttery fondue at night in a mountaintop village blanketed by snow is magical. So too is a silky fondue served on a Zurich terrace, where guests wrapped in woolly blankets plunge potatoes into steaming pots. In Ticino, the country’s Italian region, forgo the pizza and sample a fondue with fontina cheese or truffles. Because Switzerland is as small as it is – and fondue as national as it is – the bottom of another fondue pot is always nearby. What is the History of Fondue? (with pictures) What is the History of Fondue? Last Modified Date: 16 December 2016 Copyright Protected: Adorable animal families that will make you "aww" The history of fondue is an interesting one for anyone who enjoys dipping into the past to understand the culinary revels of today. Fondue is almost always considered of Swiss origin, with beginnings in the 1950s.

The date is actually incorrect, and there are disputes about whether the Swiss actually “invented” fondue. Moreover, what most people think of as fondue today (melted cheese with bread cubes, cooked beef in oil, or melted chocolate ) are not the fondues of the past. The early history suggests that the melted cheese type of fondue was likely peasant food, a good way to use up hard cheese and leftover bread. Just how early peasants created the recipe, however, and whether this was exclusive to France or Switzerland or common in both remains shrouded in mystery. The earliest printed recipes are attributed to regions that were independent of both countries, and later became part of Switzerland, and these recipes, appearing as early as the late 1600s, add eggs to pot. Melted cheese, typically Gruyere , was added to eggs, which were then scrambled. This suggests that the original fondue was actually a form of cheese souffle. Essentially, there are two different “fondue dishes,” both including eggs, and neither one like the cheese fondue of today.

In the early 20th century, recipes finally emerge that sound like modern cheese fondue, with the publication of Madame Saint-Agne’s French cookbook La Bonne Cuisine in 1927. This is where some historians claim that fondue, as it is known today, truly emerges. The cookbook is French, not Swiss. Another important point in the history of fondue is the introduction of meat, thought to have been created in New York City in the 1950s by Chef Konrad Egil of the Chalet Swiss Restaurant. On the other hand, making fondue with meat may date back much further, and is sometimes credited to monks in France or workers in vineyards. Whatever its origin, meat, typically beef, was dipped into boiling oil. This may have been inspired by cuisines far from the US, France, and Switzerland. Tableside cooking of foods is common in numerous Asian cuisines. Additionally, several melted cheese recipes in Spanish and Mexican food, such as queso de fundido cheese and sausage, may predate Saint-Agne’s melted cheese recipe.

In the 1960s and 1970s, fondue parties in America became exceptionally popular, adding yet another chapter to the history of fondue. People might serve just cheese (with cheeses like cheddar and Gouda being popular choices), or they might serve a full course of cheese and then beef. Shoppers can still find fondue pots in any kitchen supply shop in the US, accompanied by fondue forks for beef or toasted bread, so people can dip accordingly. By 1964, dessert at such a party might include chocolate fondue, where people dipped fruit, marshmallows, or small cookies into melted chocolate. The Swiss and many French provinces still serve fondue, and it’s not hard to find it in Switzerland. By the end of the 1970s in America, fondue parties fell out of vogue, though they have made a comeback starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It can be fun to host one, and it is clearly a lot easier to prepare modern fondue of any type than it is to determine the definitive and undisputed history of this culinary form.

Ad History of Fondue | Everything Fondue History of Fondue History of Fondue Switzerland – The Cheese Fondue During the 18th century the origin of fondue began in Switzerland as a way to use aged cheeses and breads to feed families who had limited access to fresh foods during the winter time. Producers of cheese and bread saw their busy season was during the warm months and that the food had to be saved by villagers to be used through the cold winter months. As the cheese would age and the breads became stale it became more difficult to eat. The local villagers found that if they heated the cheese with wines, garlic, and herbs they could dip their stale bread which would soften when dipped into the flavorful cheese mixture. This way of cooking together over one pot and eating by a warm cozy fire became a Swiss winter tradition known as fondue. The word fondue comes from the French word, ‘fondre’, which means ‘to melt’ and has since then been used to reference many other types of fondue for meats, chicken, seafood, and even chocolate. French – Meat Fondue Meat fondue also has early origins.

In the middle ages, in the French region of Burgundy, vineyard workers had to be out in the fields all day and were unable to come in to have a meal. It appears that the idea was born to have a pot of oil boiling out in the vineyard, and workers could come and cook pieces of meat as they got the opportunity for a break. The name of this type of fondue credits those vineyard workers of Burgundy: Fondue Bourguignonne. China – Broth Fondue The lighter version of meat fondue, Fondue Court Bouillon, has its origins in Asia many years ago. A man from Switzerland was visiting China, and was served a dish very similar to fondue, but the liquid used to dunk in was broth. He reported back to Swiss chefs when he returned, and thus was born the Fondue Court Bouillon. America – Chocolate Fondue Chocolate fondue or dessert fondue was an American invention and had its birth in the mid-20th century. There are several claimants to its ‘invention’, but anyone who has had it can vouch for its rightful place as an excellent fondue tradition! Fondue remains one of the last communal dining experiences and one that everyone should try.

Fondue When I hear the word fondue, I am reminded of 1970s dinner parties with four to six people sitting around a table dipping bread into a warm bowl of melted cheese or dipping chunks of beef into a pot of bubbling oil. In either case, much wine was consumed and many opinions were espoused. These meals were simple to prepare and clean up was easy. Back then, judging by how many newlyweds received multiple fondue pots as wedding gifts, people must have thought of fondue as the ideal meal for people with limited cooking ability. Like most fads, fondue fell out of favor, except in Switzerland. But even there, on one business trip in 1980, I had a hard time convincing my Swiss hosts to take me out for fondue. It wasn’t until a trip in 1996 that I finally ate fondue in Switzerland. Now, many years later, the popularity of fondue seems to be rising again. In 2004 and 2005, I spent a number of weeks working in the kitchen of a French restaurant in the old village of Gruyères, Switzerland.

Just about every restaurant in the village served fondue, but we were the exception. So I still didn’t have a chance to eat fondue in the village, that is, until my last visit when I ate one of the best fondues I’ve ever enjoyed. It was served in the private apartment of the chef, and of course we had to talk fondue. The chef was raised in the Franche-Comte, the region of France just west of Switzerland. He told of how fondue jurassienne was a common dish of the region, and how it was better than the fondue vaudoise we were eating. 1 He went on to say how this centuries-old peasant dish was just a way to consume old cheese and old bread. So is fondue French or Swiss in origin? There isn’t a simple answer, and I was not able to find a definitive answer in my research. If there was one particular day in history when the first fondue was made, no one bothered to make a note of it. Some online sources claim fondue started in Neuchâtel, which would make it not of either Swiss or French origin.

2 Neuchâtel was an independent principality until 1815 when it joined the Swiss federation. 3 Books about French cookery that purport to provide the history of fondue generally point to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du goût, ou Méditations de gastronomie transcendante as the source of the first published recipe for fondue. This work was first published in December of 1825 and is still in print. 4 Brillat-Savarin’s fondue is a bit different from today’s fondue: Pesez le nombre d’oeufs que vous voudrez employer d’après le nombre de convives. Vous prendrez ensuite un morceau de bon fromage de Gruyère pesant le tiers, et un morceau de beurre pesant le tiers de ce poids. Vous casserez et battrez bien les oeufs dans une casserole ; après quoi vous y mettrez le beurre et le fromage râpé ou émincé.

Posez la casserole sur un fourneau bien allumé, et tournez avec une spatule, jusqu’à ce que le mélange soit convenablement épaissi et mollet ; mettez-y un peu ou point de sel suivant que le fromage sera plus ou moins vieux, et une forte proportion de poivre, qui est un des caractères positifs de ce mets antique(!) ; servez sur un plat légèrement échauffé ; faites apporter le meilleur vin, qu’on boira rondement : et on verra des merveilles. 5 Or in English: Weigh the number of eggs you want to use, relative to the number of your guests. Then take a piece of a good quality Gruyère that weighs one-third and a piece of butter that weighs one-sixth. Break the eggs into a saucepan and beat well. Then add the butter and the cheese which has been grated or thinly sliced. Place the saucepan on the stove over medium-high heat and stir with a [wooden] spatula until the mixture becomes thick and soft.

Add some salt, or none if the cheese is old, and a fair amount of pepper, since this is one of the important characteristics of this time-honored dish. Serve the dish on a heated plate. Provide the best wine, which will be quickly drunk, and you will see miracles. Brillat-Savarin attributed the recipe 6 to “the papers of M. Trolliet, bailiff of Mondon, in the Canton of Berne”—a minor error since Mondon was in reality in the Canton of Vaud, which is French speaking and was independent of Switzerland until 1803, 7 and not Berne, where a dialect of German is spoken. 8 Brillat-Savarin acknowledges that this fondue “is nothing more or less than eggs scrambled with cheese, in certain proportions which time and experience have set.” 9 He goes on to say that this is a great dish to serve when unexpected guests arrive. He follows this with a story: It is a healthful, savory, and appetizing dish, quickly prepared, and always ready to do honor to the table if unexpected guests arrive.

What is more, I discuss it here solely for my own pleasure, and also because the mention of it reminds me of something which is still remembered by the old men of the district of Belley. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a Monsieur de Madot was appointed Bishop of Belley, and arrived there to take possession of his diocese. Those who were in charge of receiving him and doing him the honors of his own palace had prepared a banquet worthy of the event, and had taken advantage of every resource of the old-time cookery to celebrate Monsignor’s arrival. Among the side dishes was a generous fondue, from which the prelate served himself without stint. But, oh surprise! Not recognizing its appearance and believing it to be a crème, he ate it with his spoon instead of using his fork, which from time immemorial had been the custom with this dish. All the guests, astonished by this peculiar behavior, looked sideways at one another, with imperceptible smiles. Respect, however, stilled every tongue, for whatever a bishop from Paris does at table, especially on the day of his arrival, cannot but be well done.

News traveled fast, however, and from the next morning everybody one met would ask, “Well, and do you know how our new bishop ate his fondue last night?” “Of course I know! He ate it with a spoon! I have it from an eye witness…” and so on. The town reported the news to the country, and after three months it was public gossip throughout the diocese. The remarkable thing about it is that this incident failed to shake the foundations of our ancestors’ faith. There were some seekers after novelty who supported the cause of the spoon, but they were soon forgotten: the fork triumphed, and after more than a century one of my great-uncles was still laughing over it, and told me, with a great gust of laughter, how it was that M. de Madot had indeed one time eaten his fondue with a spoon. 10 In the same year that Brillat-Savarin published his recipe for fondue, an English physician, “many years resident on the continent,” 11 was publishing a more involved recipe for fondue au fromage. Make a sort of pap 12 with half a pint of cream or good milk and potato flour; add a little salt.

When the pap is boiled enough, put to it four yolks of eggs, half a pound of grated gruyère or Parmesan cheese, and lastly, four whites of eggs, whipped till en neige. Stir the whole well together. Next, pour the pap into a mould, place it over a stove covered with a lid, and fire on the top. It will be done enough in ten minutes, when it should be quickly served and eaten. 13 This fondue au fromage seems a bit like a cheese souffle. Antoine Gogué published a recipe in 1856 for fondue ou œufs brouillés au fromage (fondue or scrambled eggs with cheese) that is almost a carbon copy of Brillat-Savarin’s recipe. 14 Twelve years later in 1868, Pierre Blot published a recipe for “fondue of eggs” which seems to be a word-for-word copy of the same recipe except he calls for stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon. 15 Dumas, in 1873, includes another unattributed copy of Brillat-Savarin’s recipe in his cookbook.

16 In 1890, Emilie Lebour-Fawssett presented both Brillat-Savarin’s anecdote and recipe, but she added that the mixture had to be stirred with a silver spoon. 17 By the time Madame Saint-Ange includes a recipe for fondue in her La Bonne cuisine in 1927, the recipe no longer includes eggs—just cheese, wine, flour, garlic, soda, and seasoning—what most people today think of as fondue au fromage. 18 There are many variations of fondue au fromage, but they differ mainly by which cheese the recipe uses: Fondue neuchâteloise: gruyère and emmental Fondue moitié-moitié: (half-half): gruyère and Fribourg vacherin Fondue vaudoise: gruyère The true story of Chocolate Fondue... and how to make it! | European Cuisines Switzerland: Chocolate Fondue: its true history and the basic recipe Sometimes it can be difficult to pin down the actual point of origin of a fad food or drink, like Irish coffee or the Singapore sling.

So it's a pleasure, when someone asks "Where did chocolate fondue come from?", to be able to point to a spot and say with certainty, "Right there". In this case, the spot is a long-lost New York restaurant called Chalet Suisse. This restaurant (routinely misspelled in many Web citations as "Chalet Swiss", and sometimes confused with the North American restaurant chain Swiss Chalet ) was initially located, from the late 1940's until the mid-60's, at 45 West 52nd Street in Manhattan. Then in 1966 it moved to 6 East 48th Street, where it remained until the late 1980's: a long lifetime for any American city restaurant, and for one located in Manhattan, almost the equivalent of a geological age. Its owner -- originally, at the old address, its chef and then its chef-patron -- was a Swiss-born gentleman named Konrad Egli, or (to his friends and frequent guests) just Konni. Chalet Suisse was the kind of place that inspired quiet but profound loyalty among the New Yorkers who knew about it.

It's still remembered affectionately by such chef-luminaries as Jean Georges and seasoned food writers like William Grimes and Mimi Sheraton, who called it "altogether felicitous". From the start Chalet was known as a place that honored the culinary traditions suggested by its name: steady, reliable Swiss regional food, carefully handled, with nothing but the best ingredients involved in the process. James Beard wrote admiringly about the place while Konni was still just the head chef there. At Chalet Suisse: front-of-house manager Elisabeth Egli, head chef Dietmar Schlüter, barman Ismael, owner/manager Konrad Egli Some time between the late 50s and the early 60s, Konni bought out the restaurant's former owners, Alfred and Clara Baertschi, and became owner-manager of Chalet Suisse. He quickly proved himself an innovator, and not just in the food department: he was one of the first restaurateurs in New York to install air conditioning, a move that quickly gave his business a boost during the sizzling New York summers.

And for all the essentially conservative nature of the food at Chalet, Konni wasn't afraid to make changes or try new things there either. As the move to the restaurant's new location just off Fifth Avenue drew closer in the mid-60s, Konni apparently started considering what new items he might add to the menu to create some buzz around the launch. As it happens, very close to the new location -- one block north on Fifth, at the corner of 49th -- was the Swiss Center, which housed (along with the national airline Swissair and the Swiss bank UBS) the New York branch of the Swiss National Tourist Office. In his dealings with the Swiss Center, Konni was introduced to a PR lady named Beverly Allen . (The best-known source confirming this meeting and what came of it is probably Nika Standen Hazelton, author of The Swiss Cookbook. Nika gets the name of the restaurant a little backwards and in the wrong language, but at least she was writing during the right time period.) Ms.

Allen appears to have been working in conjunction with the SNTO and a Swiss-based chocolate company to publicize an interesting new product just then arriving in the USA from Switzerland -- a strange looking chocolate-and-nougat bar that could be broken into individual pieces, each shaped like a little stylized mountain. The stuff was called Toblerone, and Ms. Allen and the chocolate makers were looking for a way to launch it in the USA with a bang. After some consideration, Konni hit on the idea of using the new product in something equally new and interesting: a sweet fondue. "The Swiss thought we were crazy," Ms. Allen says in the NY Times article cited above. But Konni, unconcerned by his people's opinions about his mental health, soon found a way to produce the desired result. Like so many Swiss things, it was incredibly simple, but also absolutely dependent on high-end basic materials -- in this case, nothing but heavy cream, Toblerone, and that favorite Swiss firewater, kirsch or kirschwasser. The new dessert was launched in the restaurant's new 48th Street location not long after its opening.

Nika Standen Hazleton fastens down the earliest launch date for us by specifically mentioning that the dessert "caught on like wildfire at the restaurant ... on 48th Street", so this means that chocolate fondue's genesis occurred no earlier than 1966 -- rather later than suggested by some online sources that push the invention back into the fifties. Possibly some of those sources are confused by Konni's presence at the restaurant's earlier 1950s incarnation. More confusion may be due to the fact that chocolate fondue was not Konni's only innovation. Sylvia Lovegren, in Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads, asserts that Konni was responsible not only for chocolate fondue, but also for the invention of fondue bourguignonne, in which fresh meat is dipped into a fondue pot full of hot oil, then (once cooked) eaten with savory sauces.* This is confirmed by Konni's former chef Dietmar Schlüter, who pins down the date of introduction of fondue bourguignonne as 1956 in his cookbook Chalet Suisse: Fondue, Veal and More.

Chalet Suisse is long gone now, its former space at 6 East 48th Street occupied initially by a pasta place, then a juice bar, now a pizza and breakfast-sandwich place called Toasties. It doesn't matter. Those of us who ate there can't walk past without seeing the ghost of that demure old facade with the red awning over the door, and remembering the characteristic "thump" that the heavy, rustic wooden inner door made when the outer door opened. Konni, too, is gone. He and his charming wife Elisabeth moved to Florida, glad to leave the restaurant game behind them and relax into a happy retirement of bridge cruises. But Elisabeth died suddenly, and Konni -- never one to keep a lady waiting, especially not one he loved so dearly -- soon followed. Nonetheless, the chocolate fondue he cooked up -- literally -- survives him all over the world. It's even made its way back to Switzerland... which probably amused him no end. We've recently altered our recipe (the original of which came by way of Nika Standen Hazelton's cookbook) to reflect the one in the Chalet Suisse cookbook by Dietmar Schlüter.

Dietmar notes that though the original Chalet Suisse chocolate fondue recipe did not contain dark/bitter chocolate, the composition of Toblerone has changed over time and become significantly sweeter; so to reproduce the original effect he adds Tobler Extra Bittersweet chocolate to compensate. Chocolate Fondue a la Chalet Suisse Please note: this recipe is not suitable for chocolate fountains, as the almonds in the Toblerone will interfere with their workings. For four people: First prepare the things you're going to dunk in the chocolate. At Chalet Suisse, each guest was served with: Tiny walnut-sized puff pastries Fresh slices of Mandarin orange Small inch-wide meringues A Proper Swiss Cheese Fondue | JustHungry Home »A Proper Swiss Cheese Fondue A Proper Swiss Cheese Fondue (The 10 year anniversary of JustHungry is at the end of this month. To commemorate this pretty big birthday for the site, I'm highlighting some of my favorite posts from the archives. This recipe is for an authentic Swiss cheese fondue. It was my late mother in law Martha's recipe. It's perfect for a chilly evening.

Originally published on December 26, 2008, one year after Martha passed away.) Martha passed away on the 26th of December last year. When she was still healthy, we shared many a pot of cheese fondue with her during the cold winter months. Her fondue was without question, the best I've ever had anywhere. So in her memory, we made a proper cheese fondue. I've already posted Martha's fondue recipe 5 years ago (she was still making them then), but since it was one of the very early posts here on Just Hungry, it has no relevant picture to accompany the recipe or anything. To rectify that, here again is Martha's proper Swiss fondue, with many photos and detailed instructions. In Switzerland, Fondue is Cheese Fondue Cheese fondue is a traditional Swiss dish that originated in the Alps, mainly in and around the canton of Valais (French) / Wallis (German). Contrary to popular view outside of Switzerland, it did not originate as an après-ski snack; it's a hearty peasant dish, using ingredients that were available in the winter: cheese, wine, coarse peasant bread.

And since it a traditional dish, it never went 'out of fashion' or 'died out', as you might think it did if you live in the UK or the US or any place that had the Great Fondue Craze of the '70s, when a fondue set was a ubiquitous wedding present. In Switzerland, 'la fondue' means a cheese fondue and nothing else. Other types of dip-bits-of-food-in-a-communal-pot dishes are specifically called fondue-something, e.g. fondue bourgignonne (bits of beef filet fried in a pot of oil), fondue chinoise (thin slices of beef or other things cooked in a pot of broth), and so on. (You might be surprised to know that chocolate fondue isn't that popular in Switzerland. It may be served at touristy restaurants here, but is not a home cooking fixture by any means.) Finally, fondue is always served as the main dish, not an appetizer or as part of a multicourse meal. Equipment needed for a proper Swiss cheese fondue So, what do you need for la fondue? First you need an appropriately shaped pot.

The traditional shape is a fairly shallow, rounded ceramic pot with handle, like this one. The critical part is the rounded part, as we'll see later. This is one of the two pots we have. You also need something to keep the cheese warm. You actually cook the sauce on the stovetop, so you don't need a tabletop burner, though you can use one on a low flame. The ideal is a spirit burner, like this one. The pot is suspended over it on the iron frame. Finally you need fondue forks. Fondue forks are long and thin, perfect for skewering the bread. (Antique chipped hand-me-down plate is optional.) The cheeses and other things in the sauce The cheese sauce is usually made up of 2 or more types of cheese. A good moderately aged Gruyère (aged at least 8 to 12 months) is usually one of them, since it has such great flavor. Another popular cheese is Emmenthaler, the stereotypical 'Swiss cheese' with the big holes. Emmenthaler does make the sauce very stringy and somewhat gooey, which can make it a bit hard to handle.

Martha's preference was to use Vacherin Fribourgeois, which has a full, distinctive flavor and does not make the sauce stringy. Her secret ingredient was one block of the 'spreadable cheese' that comes wrapped in foil triangles in a round cardboard box (e.g. Laughing Cow). The otherwise icky cheese helps all the cheeses melt together and stay together coherently. The other important components in a fondue sauce are white wine and kirsch. Here in Switzerland, a young Chasselas Romand, aka Fendant, with a slight sourness is used. If you can't get hold of such a wine, a Sauvignon Blanc will do, perhaps with a squeeze of lemon juice. And kirsch just adds that extra kick. The bread In Switzerland, only bread is dipped into the cheese. Any kind of bread with a sturdy crust and a fairly robust crumb is good: a decent baguette, any kind of 'artisan' bread. Here we used a Weizenbrot, a hearty country bread. Notice all the pieces are cut so they each have a side with crust. I guess you could dip other things, but you will still want to have a good quantity of bread.

I know people like to dip things like raw or boiled vegetables, apple or pear slices and the like (in Japan they like to dip things like boiled quail eggs, wiener sausages and chikuwa (fish sausage-like things)...), but I think that if you need vegetable crudités or fruit, they are best served alongside the fondue, and to just dip bread in the sauce. (And if you get invited to a Swiss home for fondue, you'll only get bread in most cases.) If you are gluten-intolerant, use a gluten-free bread. So, let's make fondue! Recipe: Martha's Cheese Fondue Sauce This amount of sauce will serve 4 people as the main course. If you only intend to have fondue as part of a bigger meal, adjust the amounts accordingly. 1 garlic clove 50ml / about 1/4 cup kirsh 2 tsp.

cornstarch 400 g / a bit less than 1 lb Gruyère cheese (aged at least 8 to 12 months), shredded 400g / a bit less than 1 l Emmenthaler or Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese, shredded (Please use real Emmenthaler. A generic 'Swiss Cheese' will not do. Note that in Switzerland you can buy bags of pre-shredded mixed cheese called "Moitié-moitié", meaning 'half and half'.) 1 piece of 'spreadable' cheese, e.g. Laughing Cow/La Vache Qui Rit (not the mini-Babybel type, the triangular foil-wrapped soft gooey double-creme type) 3 dl / 1 1/4 US cups of young slightly sour white wine such as Chasselas or Sauvignon Blanc Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove. Discard the garlic. (This optional step adds a little extra flavor to the sauce.) Dissolve the cornstarch in the kirsch. Set aside. Put the fondue pot on a medium-heat. Add the wine and cheeses.

Heat while stirring, until the cheeses melt. Add the kirsch and keep stirring until the sauce is smooth and bubbly. This takes about 20 minutes. Now, set up your fondue pot stand and burner and transfer the pot to the stand. The burner flame (or tabletop cooker) should just be hot enough that the sauce stays how and just sort of seething on the surface. Any hotter and the cheese will burn on the bottom. Take a piece of bread, and spear it firmly on the fork so that the crust is on the outside. You can optionally lightly dip it in kirsch at this stage. Take your speared-bread fork and stir it around in the cheese sauce. Each person should scrape the sides and the bottom of the pot at least once with each go. This prevents the cheese sauce from sticking or burning on the sides. None of that namby-pamby dip-and-go! Here the bread being used to scrape off the cheese bits that stick to the surface of the pot. Now you see why a rounded-sides pot is ideal; a pot with sharp angles is much harder to scrape around properly.

If you do insist on dipping other things into the sauce, you will just want to dip those lightly, but still use the bread for that stir-wipe action. (A point of etiquette: Pull the bread off the fork with your teeth, trying not to touch the fork itself with your mouth. And absolutely no double-dipping!) As the cheese sauce gets less and less, it will get thicker. It's important to keep stirring-wiping. You may gradually want to lower the flame's intensity if you can too. When there's just a little cheese left in the pot, turn off the heat. Keep scraping off the cheese. If you've done it right, you'll just be left with a small circle of burnt on cheese, which you can carefully pry off. (Note how the pot is scraped almost clean.) The burned bit is considered to be the final treat of a fondue. A generous cook may cut it up and share it, but a more selfish one (cough) will just pop the whole thing in her mouth. So, there you have it. A proper Swiss cheese fondue, eaten the Swiss way. What to drink with a fondue, and what's for dessert The same wine that you put into the fondue would be perfect.

You could also have kirsch in shot glasses. Martha always served strong black tea, which served as a perfect palate cleanser to counteract the strong taste of the cheese sauce. The winter fruit salad she also served as dessert (usually just whatever citrus fruits were available, like grapefruit, blood or regular orange, etc.) was a nice refreshing ending to the meal. If you can't use alcohol for some reason Do remember that this sauce is properly cooked on the stovetop, not just heated through until the cheese melts, so most of the alcohol content will evaporate. Swiss kids eat fondue along with the adults and grow up to be fine upstanding citizens. If you can't have alcohol for religious reasons and so on, this recipe may not be for you. Submitted by maki on 2013-11-07 22:14. Filed under: Fun Holiday – Chocolate Fondue Day 5 Fun Holiday – Chocolate Fondue Day February 5 is Chocolate Fondue Day, a made-up holiday that encourages people to get together with family and friends and enjoy a fondue pot of delicious and gooey melted chocolate. Serve chocolate fondue with lots of healthy fruits on Chocolate Fondue Day.

Chocolate fondue is easy to make at home. ©bigstockphoto.com/llaszlo Chocolate fondue is the dessert version of the traditional fondue – pieces of bread and vegetables dipped in melted cheese. In chocolate fondue, pieces of fruit, cake or cookies are dipped into sweetened melted chocolate. Bringing People Together Fondue is a communal dish eaten out of a pot that is kept warm with a candle or lamp. The heat keeps the cheese or the chocolate melted and warm. Diners use skewers, toothpicks, or special fondue forks to dip the bread or fruit in the melted cheese or chocolate. Etiquette requires that the dipping instrument is only used to bring the food from the fondue pot to the diner’s plate and that diners never double dip their morsels of food in the cheese or chocolate. An American Invention With Swiss Roots Thought to the national dish of Switzerland , fondue is thought to have originated in the country as a way to use up leftover cheese. Original cheese fondue recipes called for the cheese to be mixed with wine and herbs.

Rumor has it that chocolate fondue was first created in the United States , where this holiday is also known as National Chocolate Fondue Day, sometime in the 1950s. How to Celebrate? With chocolate fondue, of course! Get your friends and family together and indulge in some delicious chocolate fondue. To keep it healthy, offer an array of fruits – apples, strawberries, oranges, bananas – to the diners. In addition to fruits, you can also serve cake, cookies, waffles, marshmallows, and ice cream cubes for everyone to dip in the chocolate. Have a chocolate fondue party. Set up a fondue station with different kinds of melted chocolates and chocolate flavors. May be recommend dark chocolate with bacon bits, salted caramel chocolate, mint chocolate , and white chocolate with sprinkles? Did You Know… ...that fondue bourguignonne is a type of fondue where diners dip pieces of uncooked meat into hot oil? Chocolate Fondue Day Observances

Question: Fondue originated in which country?
Answer: Switzerland