If you discarded your fondue pot years ago because it smacked of polyester and geometric prints, you're probably sorry now. But if you hid your fondue pot in a closet, hoping to take it out again one day, prime that alcohol burner because fondue is back. After years of being associated with wine-soaked parties where everyone went home hungry, cooks are remembering that fondue tasted really good.

"Fondue" comes from the French word "fondre," meaning "to melt." In France, "fondue" still refers to vegetables cooked down into a sort of puree to be served with meats. The kind of fondue that gave rise to all those once-unwanted fondue pots is fondue au fromage, or cheese fondue. It comes from the Swiss, who developed the classic recipe of melted Emmenthaler and Gruyere cheese flavored with a hint of garlic, light-bodied white wine, and a goodly dollop of kirsch, a cherry brandy. It's traditionally served in an enameled cast-iron pot (or in a ceramic or earthenware pot) over a flame. Diners use long forks to dunk cubes of chewy French bread into the molten cheese.

The fondue that many think of as "oil fondue" or "meat fondue," is actually fondue bourguignonne. The long forks are used to skewer cubes of beef, which are then cooked in a fondue pot full of hot oil, fork still attached, and removed to diners' plates to be eaten with a range of sauces that typically include a horseradish and sour-cream sauce and a tomato-based sauce. Pots for this type of fondue are traditionally copper, which transmits the heat from a little alcohol burner more easily and helps keep the oil hot enough to cook.

Last is chocolate fondue, ideally nothing more than good chocolate melted with heavy cream and a liqueur. Items to dip often include chunks of pound cake, banana, pineapple, and strawberries, as well as pretzel sticks, marshmallows, and orange sections. Chocolate fondue is best served in a ceramic or earthenware pot, and the flame must be kept low or the chocolate can scorch. Those small ceramic fondue pots heated with votive candles are perfect for chocolate (and not much else).

Do you have to buy three different pots? Not if you have the cast-iron type, covered in enamel. These enameled pots are suitable for all three styles of fondue. If you already have a ceramic or earthenware pot, save it for chocolate or cheese--they're not appropriate for the high temperature of boiling oil you need to cook meat. If you have a metal pot, it's great for cooking meat in oil. But a metal pot can, in a pinch, be converted to a cheese or chocolate pot if you have a heatproof ceramic bowl that fits down into it, along with some hot water between the metal and the bowl to form a makeshift double boiler.

One of the biggest mistakes in fondue making is expecting the alcohol burner or candle to do the cooking for you. Avoid fondue heartache by fully melting or heating your fondue on the stovetop before transferring it to the tabletop burner. The flame under the fondue is intended to keep chocolate and cheese hot, not to cook it. A can of Sterno or a similarly strong flame will help keep the oil at a cooking heat for fondue bourguignonne--but only once you've heated it on top of the stove. If you expect cold oil to come to a boil on your dining room table, it'll be a long hungry night.

By the same token, don't expect a few chunks of bread and a few cubes of meat to serve as an entire meal. Consider a cheese or meat fondue as a main dish and bolster it with side dishes. Cheese fondue is often served with thin-sliced ham, pickled onions, and tart cornichons (a tiny French pickled cucumber), as well as a green salad. A meat fondue requires baked potatoes or a dish of scalloped potatoes, as well as a salad and/or green vegetable, and perhaps crusty rolls and butter for diners to nibble while the meat starts to cook. You could fill up guests with chocolate fondue for dessert, but that's the kind of overkill that gave fondue a bad name. Save the chocolate kind for another meal. This time, we want fondue to stick around for awhile.