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e, 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 Gruyère 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 Gruyère cheese, weighing about a third of the eggs, and a nut of butter 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 Gruyère would come to 1/4 pound and your butter to 1/8 pound.)
Break and beat the eggs well in a flat pan, then add the butter 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 passed 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