fondue

French fondre came from Latin fundere (to pour, to melt). Fondue was the past participle, the already-melted: cheese that had been melted together. The dish originated in the Swiss Alps as a way to use aged, hardened cheeses in winter — heated with wine and a little starch to keep the emulsion stable. The fondue pot (caquelon) was the communal vessel from which everyone ate.

Swiss cheese fondue was regional and humble before it became fashionable. The Swiss Cheese Union (Schweizerische Käseunion) in the 1950s and 1960s aggressively promoted fondue as a Swiss national dish, sending fondue sets to Swiss embassies worldwide and sponsoring demonstrations at ski resorts. The campaign was spectacularly successful: fondue became the international symbol of Swiss cuisine.

In 1970, the Konrad Egli at the Chalet Suisse restaurant in New York introduced chocolate fondue — a confection using chocolate and cream into which fruit and cake could be dipped. The chocolate version had no historical Swiss precedent; it was a marketing invention, but it spread the fondue concept far beyond cheese. Oil fondue (fondue bourguignonne) — raw meat dipped into hot oil — followed.

The fondue set's cultural moment was the 1970s, when it appeared in almost every middle-class kitchen in the Western world. It then largely retreated to the backs of cabinets, displaced by other trends, to return periodically as retro-chic. The Swiss Alpine cheese dish that began as winter peasant food has followed a full circuit from necessity to poverty to fashion to kitsch to revival.