Mont d'Or chaud — Switzerland

Mont d'Or chaud, also called "boîte chaude" or hot Vacherin, is a melted-cheese dish built around a single wheel of Mont d'Or (Vacherin Mont-d'Or), a soft cow's-milk cheese wrapped in a strip of spruce bark and sold in its own round wooden box between August and March, when the cheese is in season. This page follows the version served in the canton of Vaud, in French-speaking Switzerland, where the cheese is baked directly in its spruce box rather than melted in a caquelon as with a regular fondue. It sits alongside a closely related page for the Franche-Comté side of the border, since the Mont d'Or / Vacherin Mont-d'Or area straddles the Swiss-French frontier and cooks on both sides bake the same cheese in much the same way. To prepare it, the top rind is scored or pierced, a little dry white wine, sometimes a dash of kirsch, and slivers of garlic are pushed into the cheese, and the box is wrapped in foil and baked until the inside turns runny. It is brought to the table still in its box and scooped straight from it with a spoon, onto boiled or roasted potatoes, with cured meats such as dried beef or ham on the side. What sets the Vaud preparation apart from its French counterpart is mostly a matter of small habits rather than a different dish: some cooks favour kirsch over wine, others skip the garlic, and side dishes shift between plain boiled potatoes and small roast ones with charcuterie. The cheese itself, its wooden box, and its short winter season are shared by both places, and neither is presented on AllGastronomy as coming before the other.