Fondue Cookery [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION What is a fondue ? To different people it means different things. Most people know a fondue as the national dish of Switzerland, the Swiss Cheese Fondue. However if you look up 'fondue' in Larousse Gastronomique, the dictionary of food and cooking, you will find that a fondue can be a vegetable preparation that is cooked in butter or oil for a long time until it is reduced to a pulp. Yet another interpretation of a fondue is given by an 18th century gastronome, Brillat-Savarin, whose recipe for fondue is really scrambled eggs with cheese! All these types of fondue have one thing in common, they all involve the melting or blending of ingredients. This is how they originally came by their name; the French word "fondre' means to melt or blend. As I mentioned before however, a fondue is recognised today as being the Cheese Fondue which is cooked in many homes around the world in a specially designed 'fondue pot', the cooking being done in front of the guests and everyone serving themselves from the communal fondue pot. Dessert fondues are alsó made by melting and so are true fondues but it has alsó become usage to call other dishes, that are cooked in a similar fashion, fondues. This is well illustrated in the section on Bourguignonne Fondues.