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Royal Custard with Chestnuts
3 egg yolks 3 tablespoons white broth 1 large French chestnut 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Boil chestnut until mealy, pound and crush to a paste, mix with the broth. Beat eggs and seasonings and combine with the broth mixture, pour in buttered moulds, place in hot water and bake until firm. Cool, remove from moulds and cut into fancy shapes.
This is a garnish, not a dish: a firm egg-yolk custard baked in a water bath, chilled, then cut into shapes and floated in clear soup. The whole batch amounts to a few tablespoons of custard.
- The hinge: gentle, even heatThe water bath must never simmer. If it bubbles, the yolks curdle and the custard turns spongy and pitted instead of slicing cleanly. Set the pan of hot water in a 325F oven and expect 20-30 minutes for moulds this small; the custard is done when the center barely trembles.
- White brothA pale, unbrowned stock — veal or chicken made from unroasted bones, what period kitchens called white broth. Any light, well-strained, unsalted chicken stock works; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, since the point is that the custard stays ivory.
- "Bake until firm"No temperature is given; the setting is left to the cook's judgement. For a custard this thin, 325F is safe, and the custard should reach about 175F at the center.
- One large French chestnutA marron — the large single-kernel chestnut sold in France for candying, roughly half an ounce peeled. Vacuum-packed or jarred cooked chestnuts are the practical substitute; two ordinary chestnuts approximate one marron. "Boil until mealy" means about 20 minutes for fresh chestnuts, until they crush without resistance.
- Pounding to a pasteThe mortar work is what a small food processor or a fine sieve does now. Push the cooked chestnut through a sieve before mixing it with the broth, then strain the finished custard mixture as well — any lump shows up badly in clear soup.
- MouldsButter shallow, straight-sided containers so the set custard turns out in a slab about half an inch thick. Small ramekins or a buttered saucer covered with foil both work; depth matters more than shape, since deep moulds cook unevenly and the custard is cut up anyway.
- Cutting the shapesChill thoroughly before unmoulding — warm custard tears. Aspic or truffle cutters give diamonds, crescents and stars; a sharp knife and a straight edge give neat dice.
- YieldEnough garnish for several cups of consommé, a few pieces per serving. It is not meant to be eaten on its own and adds body, not bulk.
Custards of this kind are known in professional cookery as royale, and their whole purpose is to give a clear soup something to look at: a consommé is strained to transparency, so any garnish must be added back deliberately, in cut shapes, without clouding the broth. The technique belongs to the French repertoire that American cookbooks absorbed in the late nineteenth century, and the presence of such a fussy garnish in a promotional cookbook suggests the home cook was expected to learn the same graces she would meet at a hotel dinner. The chestnut version reflects the era's taste for named variations on a standard: royale flavored with tomato, with green peas, with poultry purée, each cut into its own shape. "French chestnut" meant the imported marron, larger and easier to peel than the American chestnut, which was still common in the early twentieth century but was already being lost to the blight that removed it from cooking within a generation.