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Compote of Chestnuts
Take 30 large chestnuts, peel off the outer brown skin, and put them into a saucepan of cold water. When the water is just on the point of boiling take them off, remove the second skin, and be careful not to break the chestnuts. Make a syrup with a breakfast-cupful of water and a quarter of a pound of sugar, adding a glass of sherry and the rind of half an orange or a lemon, cut very thin. Put the chestnuts into this, and let them simmer gently for twenty minutes. Strain the syrup over the chestnuts, and serve hot. Sift a little sugar over them. Time, about forty minutes.
A simple sugar-and-sherry braise for peeled chestnuts, listed among vegetables because chestnuts were treated as a starch course rather than a sweet. The whole point is keeping the nuts whole, so everything hinges on gentle heat.
- QuantityThirty large chestnuts is very roughly 1 lb / 500 g in the shell, losing perhaps a fifth of that weight to shell and skin. Enough for four to six as a side dish.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup: reckon it at about 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. With ¼ lb sugar (a generous ½ cup, 115 g) that gives a light syrup, not a candying one.
- A glass of sherryIn cookery of this period a wine glass is about 2 fl oz / 60 ml. Use a dry or medium amontillado; cream sherry will push the syrup over into cloying.
- PeelingThe inner pellicle only comes away cleanly while the chestnut is hot, so work in small batches and keep the rest in the water.
- Vacuum-packed chestnutsPeeled cooked chestnuts in a jar or pouch are an honest substitute and skip the entire first stage. Add them to the finished syrup and simmer eight to ten minutes, no more, as they are already soft.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil breaks the nuts into meal and the syrup then thickens around the debris. Keep the surface barely trembling for the full twenty minutes.
- The citrus rindPare the rind with a vegetable peeler and take no white pith, which turns the syrup bitter over twenty minutes of simmering. Lift the strips out before serving.
- FinishingThe recipe simply strains the syrup over the chestnuts; if you want it thicker, reduce it over higher heat after lifting the chestnuts out and then pour it back. The dusting of sugar at the end is for appearance and can be omitted.