France and the Alps · Volume 16, Altitude, Cheese and a Border the Kitchen Never Drew

Malakoff

Name: Malakoff
Total time: 30 min
Yield: Serves 4 as a starter
Cuisine: The Alps and French-speaking Switzerland
Ingredients: 400 g Gruyère AOP, cut into roughly 1 cm sticks; 3 dl (Chasselas) white wine, to marinate; to cover flour, to dredge; 200 g flour, 1.5 dl milk, 3 egg yolks flour, milk and egg yolks, for the batter; 3 egg whites, whipped, folded into the batter; for frying oil, for frying

Vaud, the Côte, specifically the five villages of Eysins, Begnins, Bursins, Luins and Vinzel

Malakoff, batter-fried sticks of Gruyère cheese with a molten centre: several golden brown fried batons standing upright on a plain plate, the crisp fried shell cracked open at one end to reveal a molten pale cheese centre spilling slightly.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 30 minutes

Researched: 22 sources cited
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

Vaud, the Côte, specifically the five villages of Eysins, Begnins, Bursins, Luins and Vinzel. See the history section above for the unconfirmed Crimean War legend and the better-documented Larpin family layer.

by Vaud, the Côte, specifically the five villages of Eysins, Begnins, Bursins, Luins and Vinzel

The Malakoff carries its own contested-origin story, structurally similar to tartiflette's. Popular legend places its invention during the 1853 to 1855 Crimean War siege of the Malakoff redoubt, Swiss soldiers supposedly frying cheese slices near the entrenchments. The French Wikipedia article on the dish states directly that "no written source, in any case, confirms this legend." The better-documented layer sits a generation later: around 1880 to 1891, Ida Larpin, a cook in the household of Prince Napoléon at his villa in Prangins, is credited with the modern batter-fried Gruyère recipe, for a reception honouring Crimean War veterans; her recipe passed to cousins Alfred and Rose Larpin, innkeepers at the Écusson Vaudois in Eysins, credited with refining the frying medium from butter to oil. The dish remains specifically associated with five villages on the Vaudois Côte: Eysins, Begnins, Bursins, Luins and Vinzel.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4 as a starter. About 30 minutes.

Ingredients

400 g Gruyère AOP, cut into roughly 1 cm sticks
3 dl (Chasselas) white wine, to marinate
to cover flour, to dredge
200 g flour, 1.5 dl milk, 3 egg yolks flour, milk and egg yolks, for the batter
3 egg whites, whipped, folded into the batter
for frying oil, for frying

Method

Marinate the Gruyère sticks briefly in white wine.
Dredge in flour.
Dip in a batter of flour, milk and egg yolks lightened with whipped egg whites folded in.
Fry in oil until golden.

What a modern chef changes

A twice-fried structure for a more stable shell, and the marinade rebuilt with a longer contact time

Rung 6

Method

Extend the wine marinade to two hours, refrigerated, rather than a brief dip, giving the cheese sticks genuine time to absorb the wine's acidity through to the centre, the same protein-dispersing logic rung 1 identifies in fondue, applied here before any heat is involved at all.
Fry in two stages: a shorter first fry at a lower oil temperature to set the batter's structure without over-browning, followed by a brief rest, then a second, hotter fry immediately before service to finish the colour and crispen the shell further. This two-stage approach, standard for anything battered where the centre needs real heat penetration without the exterior burning, protects the cheese's own melting point from being reached before the batter has fully set around it.
Serve with a small dish of the reduced marinating wine, lightly thickened, rather than nothing at all, giving the dish a considered sauce element in the same spirit as the reduced braising liquids used elsewhere in this chapter's modernist versions.

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