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Forcemeat, Chestnut
Remove the outer skin from some chestnuts (they should be ripe and sound). Boil them for two or three minutes to get off the inner skin. Peel them, and to preserve their colour throw them into cold water; drain and weigh them. Stew six ounces of them gently for about twenty minutes in veal gravy. Let them get cold, pound them till smooth with an equal quantity of butter, or half their weight in fat bacon, and add two ounces of bread-crumbs, and a little salt, lemon-rind, and nutmeg. Bind the mixture together with the unbeaten yolks of two eggs. If this forcemeat is formed into cakes, these should be dipped into flour before being fried. Time to fry, fifteen minutes.
A Victorian chestnut forcemeat, meant either as stuffing for poultry or shaped into cakes and fried as a garnish. The whole thing hinges on getting both skins off the chestnuts cleanly.
- The two skinsThe glossy outer shell comes off first; the bitter, papery inner pellicle is what the two- to three-minute boil loosens. Work with a few nuts at a time and keep the rest hot, because the pellicle grips harder as they cool.
- Vacuum-packed chestnutsPeeled cooked chestnuts sold in jars or pouches skip the whole business. They are already tender, so give them only a brief warming in the gravy rather than the full twenty minutes.
- WeightsSix ounces is about 170 g of peeled chestnuts. With an equal weight of butter that is 170 g, which is very rich by modern taste; the fat-bacon option at half the weight (85 g) gives a firmer, more savoury result and is the better choice for frying.
- Veal gravyNot gravy in the thickened sense but a light veal stock. Any unsalted light stock works, or chicken stock; the point is that the chestnuts absorb savour while they soften. Season at the end, since a reduced stock plus the bacon can push the salt high.
- PoundingA food processor does in seconds what the mortar was for. Pulse rather than run it, and stop while there is still a little texture, or the mixture turns to paste and the fried cakes come out dense.
- Lemon-rindFinely grated zest only, no white pith. A teaspoon is ample for this quantity, as is a light grating of nutmeg.
- Raw yolkThe unbeaten yolks bind the mixture and are cooked through in the frying or in the bird. Chill the mixture for half an hour before shaping so the cakes hold together in the pan.
- Frying timeFifteen minutes suits thick cakes in shallow fat over a moderate heat, turning once. Small, flat cakes will be browned and hot through in six to eight minutes; judge by colour rather than the clock.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; on these quantities it should be about enough to stuff a chicken, or roughly a dozen small cakes as a garnish for roast game or poultry.
Forcemeat, from the French farce and ultimately the Latin farcire, was a fixed part of the Victorian kitchen's repertoire: a bound, seasoned paste used to stuff birds, line pies, shape into quenelles, or fry as small cakes to garnish a roast. Cassell's, which ran to thousands of entries and treated cookery as a subject to be indexed rather than narrated, gives a whole family of them, distinguished by their base ingredient. The chestnut version belongs to the long European tradition of pairing sweet chestnuts with poultry and game. That it appears here with veal gravy, butter and fat bacon is a reminder of how thoroughly the chestnut could be enriched with meat rather than served plain.