[Sca-cooks] clay fondue pot

[Mark.S Harris]

Anne-Marie answered my question about her camp fondue with:
> the closest thing I have to fondue is Digby's Savory toasted cheese and La
> Varennes ramekins of cheese, but neither are really fondu, ie no wine, not
> melty with dippage, etc. so no, I have NO documentation that fondue is

The fondue book I have mentions a lot of recipes. Only a few have wine
in them as far as I remember.

Digby's Savory Tosted Cheese I am quite familar with and the original
and numerous redactions are in my cheese-msg file. "Varennes ramekins of
cheese" however seemed new to me, so I looked in up in the same file.
The only info I have is from you as:

> Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:06:03 -0800
> From: "Anne-Marie Rousseau" <acrouss at gte.net>
> Subject: Re: SC - fondue?
>
> There's Digby's cheese, and my favorite from la Varenne (1651). La Varenne
> is sauteeing onion/chives/shallots in butter, add cubed cheese, melt and
> spread on bread. Stick it under the broiler till its all brown and bubbly.
> Yum!
>
> ok ok ok la Varenne isn't medieval. sheesh! :)
> - --Anne-Marie

Could you post the original? I'd like to have it to go along with your
above description. In many ways, it seems to resemble Digby's version,
although with a single cheese? Most of the redactions I remember for
Digby's version use a combination of cheeses plus butter.

Hmmm. Both of these also seem similar to Welsh Rarebit. Oops. Okay in
looking through my cheese-msg file I do see where Adamantius posted a
very good message comparing the three cheese dishes.

> for technique, we took my cute clay pipkin on its maiden voyage. we cut the
> cheese into cubes, threw in a glug or two of white wine, some pepper and
> let it heat. <snip>

Thank you for this description.

Stefan
(There are disadvantages of reading this list just before lunch...)