Today, April 11, 2014, is National Cheese Fondue Day. Fondue is a Swiss, Italian, and French dish of melted cheese served in a communal pot over a portable stove , and eaten by dipping long-stemmed forks with bread into the cheese. It was promoted as a Swiss national dish by the Swiss Cheese Union in the 1930s, and was popularized in North America in the 1960s. The earliest known recipe for cheese fondue as we know it today comes from a 1699 book published in Zurich, under the name "Käss mit Wein zu kochen" "to cook cheese with wine". It calls for grated or cut-up cheese to be melted with wine, and for bread to be dipped in it.
