Chocolate Fondue Day

What the day is

Chocolate Fondue Day is observed on February 5. Melted chocolate for dipping sounds foolproof and has one spectacular failure mode.

Origin and background

Fondue as a category was a marketing success before it was a tradition. Cheese fondue existed in Swiss alpine cooking, but its promotion as the national dish was driven hard by the Swiss cheese union from the 1930s onward, deliberately encouraging domestic consumption. Chocolate fondue is later and not Swiss in origin at all, generally credited to a New York restaurant in the 1960s promoting Swiss chocolate, which then fed back into the fondue craze of that decade.

The chemistry worth knowing is seizing. Melted chocolate is a suspension of dry particles, cocoa solids and sugar, in fat. Add a small amount of water and it does not thin the mixture as expected. It wets the sugar and solids, which clump together into a gritty paste almost instantly, and the smooth liquid becomes unusable. A single drop from a wet spoon or a whisper of steam from the pan beneath is enough.

The counterintuitive part is the fix. Adding more water rescues it. Enough liquid dissolves the sugar completely rather than merely dampening it, and the mixture becomes a smooth sauce again, which is exactly why ganache, made deliberately with cream, works perfectly. Small amounts of water are the enemy; generous amounts are a different recipe.

This is also why fondue recipes call for cream or a little oil rather than pure chocolate. Straight melted chocolate sets too firmly on cold fruit and is intolerant of any moisture the dippers carry.

Wet fruit is the usual culprit, so anything going in should be genuinely dry.

How to take part

• Add cream to the chocolate rather than melting it alone.
• Dry the fruit thoroughly before it goes anywhere near the pot.
• Melt gently and keep steam away from the bowl.
• If it seizes, add more warm cream rather than giving up.
• Offer something salty alongside, which cuts the sweetness better than more fruit.