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Chestnut Sauce for Turkey or Chicken
Mash 1 cupful of boiled chestnuts and stir into 1 1/2 cupfuls of hot white stock; season with 1 teaspoonful of catsup, 1/4 teaspoonful salt, 1/4 teaspoonful paprika, 1 tablespoonful butter. Cook until smooth and of the proper consistency.
A short, old-fashioned pan sauce built on chestnut purée rather than flour. The whole thing hangs on how finely the chestnuts are broken down and how much stock you let it take.
- ChestnutsA cupful of boiled chestnuts means shelled and peeled nuts, roughly 8 oz in the shell to start. Vacuum-packed or jarred cooked chestnuts work directly; unsweetened canned purée can stand in at about 3/4 cup, in which case skip the mashing.
- PeelingScore an X in the flat side of each nut before boiling, and peel while still hot. The inner pellicle sets like paper once the nuts cool and will leave bitter shreds in the sauce.
- White stockIn this period white stock means a pale, unroasted veal or poultry stock. Ordinary low-sodium chicken stock is the sensible substitute, and since the recipe only calls for 1/4 teaspoon of salt, taste before adding more.
- CatsupThe teaspoonful of catsup here is doing the work of a savoury seasoning, not a sweetener. Catsup at this date could mean tomato, but mushroom and walnut catsups were still bottled as well; a teaspoon of mushroom ketchup gives a darker, less sweet result than modern tomato ketchup if that is the direction you want.
- Texture is the hingeMash the chestnuts to a genuine paste, or better, press them through a sieve or work them in a food processor with a little of the stock. Chestnut is starchy and grainy by nature, and lumps will not cook out.
- ConsistencySimmer gently, stirring, until it coats a spoon; the recipe says only 'until smooth and of the proper consistency.' Chestnut starch thickens as it stands, so loosen with a spoonful of stock just before serving.
- YieldMakes a scant 2 cups, enough for six to eight servings alongside roast turkey or chicken.
Chestnuts were a standard autumn and winter thickener in European kitchens long before this book, used as purée, stuffing and sauce where later cooks reached for flour or breadcrumbs. American compendia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carry a run of such sauces for roast poultry, a period when domestic chestnuts were still cheap and abundant in the eastern United States; the blight that destroyed the American chestnut spread through those same decades, and by mid-century most chestnuts in American kitchens were imported. The catsup in the seasoning is a reminder that bottled savoury condiments of mushroom or walnut were treated as pantry staples for rounding out a sauce, much as commercial stock bases are now.