Need a medieval irish fondue recipe for faire?

Question

I'm working in my local Renaissance faire which is set in medieval ireland and need to know if fondue had made to britain from switzerland by then and if yes I would love some old recipes thank you

Answer 1

The first known recipe for a fondue appears in Homer's Iliad; scroll 11, lines 629-645..it is made from Pramnos wine, goat's cheese and white flour..so the dish, if not the name, has been around for a good long time. People travelled and traded far more widely during the middle ages and earlier than we tend to realise and i see no reason why some medieval Irish traveller might not have brought this dish back to Ireland with him..or perhaps a religious traveller to Ireland could have done so. try making the fondue with a good Irish Cheddar..unless you are in Ireland and can get hold of a really fantastic cheese from a farmer's market; use any wine you please, a lot of wine was shipped around the world during the past couple of thousand years..one of the oldest still in production is Est Est Est, an Italian wine,semi sweet and delicious with cheese. Then serve your fondue up with chunks of soda bread, Irish sausages, black and white pudding and whatever else you like. This may be taking a few liberties with history, but none of them are impossible  or even particularly improbable and the result should be delicious.

Answer 2

I found a couple of sites about Medieval food and while they may not have had fondue as we know it, I can well imagine them having communal pots of sauces into which they dipped bread. You will find a few recipes at under 'Soups & Sauces' at the first site: Historic Menus including Medieval at 'The Foody site', and edited messages from 'Stefan's Florilegium' on Food of medieval Ireland. Good luck with the 'Faire'!

Answer 3

I really would doubt that fondue had reached Britain that long ago. In medieval times it was all meat cooked on the spit, people ate with their fingers. I think you need to brush up on your history. The first time I can remember fondues was in the 1960s when it became quite fashionable.

Answer 4

Hang on - I'm not sure fondue has reached Ireland even yet!!

The best you can do is go for some home made irish cheese - they are delicious

and add some definitely irish ingredients into it by googling irish cookery and seeing what comes up.

Ireland and fondue?  Hmmm.  

Answer 5

I think you will be better off using your imagination.

Answer 6

Look in a good cookbook for a recipe  called syllabub. It,s a sweet dish based on cream and very old. If it,s savoury you want.Well, the best one Iever saw was in Richard Mabey,s book: Food for Free.I believe it was a form of salmagundy. Anyway, medieval, meat and sweet flavours mixed, as the original mincemeat was. But if you insist on the cheese dish, try real welsh rarebit, which involves cheese milk beer or wine mustard, and in some cases, flour. good luck

Answer 7

I'm not even sure that Switzerland was enjoying fondue in the Renaissance. I think it's highly unlikely.

You could always skin a few leprechauns, skewer them and dunk them in boiling Guinness.