Classic Cheese Fondue – Lana’s Cooking

This Classic Cheese Fondue, using both Swiss and Gruyere cheese with bread and fruit dippers, is a wonderful treat on a cold evening. It’s a fun way to break the ice at a dinner party or to liven up a family get-together.

This cool vintage recipe is one I’m glad to see being revived by younger cooks. I quite honestly had not thought about fondue since sometime in the early ’80s until recently, when we had dinner at a beautiful fondue restaurant in Quebec City.

Fondue actually started out as Swiss peasant food, a thrifty way to use up hardened cheese, stale bread, and a little wine. It remained a regional dish until the 1930s, when the Swiss Cheese Union began promoting it as the national dish to grow cheese sales. Fondue made its American debut a few decades later at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and from there it became the party food of the era.

I remember fondue parties really well! A fondue pot was a must-have item on the wedding gift registry back in those days. Probably every newly married couple from the mid-70s until the early 80’s owned one.

It was a fun thing to bring out for parties. Everyone had their own little fork and served themselves from the pot. These days, however, I’ve been seeing mostly dessert fondues online. Primarily chocolate. With wonderful dippers like marshmallows, fruits, and little bite-sized pieces of pound cake.

How delicious! And so much fun for kids. They really love the chocolate. But I want to revisit the Classic Cheese Fondue that we all love so much. I usually think of this as a winter recipe. One to be enjoyed on a lazy Sunday afternoon in front of a nice fire. Maybe with a glass or two of wine.

That’s the way I serve it these days. And it’s still just as good as I remember it from way back when.

This is a traditional Swiss fondue recipe at heart with Swiss and Gruyère cheeses melted into dry white wine, a garlic-rubbed pot, a squeeze of lemon juice, dry mustard, and a pinch of nutmeg. It comes together in about thirty minutes and easily serves six.