The Cubed Meat King Harold Eats In Shrek 2 Is Actually A French Delicacy

Have you seen "Shrek 2" recently? You know, the sequel to the wildly popular DreamWorks film that won the very first Oscar for Best Animated Feature? The one that ends with donkey-dragon hybrid babies whose implications we'd rather not consider? Well, in that movie, there's a character named King Harold (voiced by Monty Python co-founder John Cleese, one of the people we have to thank for the phrase "spam" applying to junk mail), whom we see eating a curious dish near the beginning of the film. Before King Harold sits a plate of meat cubes, which he skewers before dipping into some sort of pot. What on earth is it? If your first thought was fondue, you'd be correct — specifically, it's fondue bourguignonne, a variation on a classic Swiss dish.

Switzerland, being a nation of cheese geniuses, usually makes fondue with melted cheese like Emmental, into which they dip bread, vegetables, or fruit. But fondue bourguignonne, or Burgundy fondue, takes things in a slightly more medieval direction. Here, diners skewer cubes of raw beef, which they dip into boiling oil (!) until it's cooked to their satisfaction. It's a little less common than its cheese and chocolate counterparts, and understandably so — it's hard enough dealing with boiling oil when you're just frying up some chicken, let alone cooking your dinner moments before you eat it. Still, those beef cubes on King Harold's plate looked pretty good for 2004-era CGI, and we can't blame you if you want to try it.

So how did this dish come to be? If you assumed the good peasant folk of Burgundy were dipping little cubes of beef in hot oil back in the days of the ancien régime, you'd be mistaken. It's a Swiss dish — the name comes from the use of beef, which often came from the Burgundy region. Workers who didn't have time to go home for dinner would bring their own oil pots and cook meat in them over break (which sounds like just as much of a hassle as going home, quite frankly, but we're not going to argue with long-dead Swiss laborers.). Those are the dish's roots — fondue bourguignonne proper is often credited to Swiss-born Konrad Egli, who served it at his New York restaurant Chalet Suisse in 1956. (Egli also reportedly created chocolate fondue, which was made with Toblerone, heavy cream, and either brandy, Cointreau, or the Swiss brandy kirschwasser).

If you want in on the action yourself, you don't need to import your beef from Burgundy. Regular beef tenderloin will do the job nicely, and you can even substitute other kinds of meat, like chicken or little  meatballs. Unfortunately, you will have to spring for an actual fondue pot, as it's the best and safest way to keep the oil hot without burning yourself. On the bright side, though, you can dip your meat in plenty of fancy little sauces, from red and green sauces to béarnaise, the king of steak sauces. Just make sure you don't get into a fight with an ogre at the table.