Valdostan
Fonduta: molten Fontina cheese.
Fonduta
Fontina cheese melted with milk, butter and egg yolk into a silky pot for dipping bread — the Aosta Valley's answer to fondue.
View page →The Aosta Valley is Italy's smallest and highest region, a French-speaking alpine pocket wedged against Mont Blanc, and its cooking is mountain food built around one great cheese: Fontina. Nutty and meltingly soft, it becomes fonduta, the Valdostan fondue of melted Fontina, milk, butter, and egg yolk, eaten with bread and sometimes shaved white truffle. The same cheese stuffs costoletta alla valdostana, a breaded veal cutlet packed with Fontina and ham, and melts into polenta concia, cornmeal enriched with butter and cheese until it runs. Long winters call for slow, warming dishes — carbonade valdostana, beef stewed dark in red wine, and zuppa alla valpellinentze, a baked soup of cabbage, bread, and Fontina layered together. The antipasto of choice is mocetta, alpine meat salt-cured and air-dried in the thin mountain air. It is hearty, cheese-laden, cold-weather cooking with one foot firmly across the French border.
The Palate
Start Here
Fontina melted with milk, butter, and egg yolk into a smooth fondue for dipping bread, sometimes crowned with white truffle.
Why start here · It is the purest expression of the valley's one great cheese and its alpine table.
A breaded veal cutlet stuffed with Fontina and ham, fried so the cheese pulls in molten threads.
Why start here · It folds the region's signature cheese into a hearty cutlet, a satisfying first bite of Aosta.
Beef stewed dark and tender in red wine, a slow dish built for the valley's long winters.
Why start here · It shows the warming, wine-braised cooking that gets a high alpine valley through the cold.
The Pantry
See all 92 ingredients›
Sauces & Condiments
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
Kindred Kitchens
Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients
Other regions
Siblings within Italian — each its own tradition.
