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Bordure de Marrons à la
Chantilly. (Border of Chestnuts with Cream.) Ingredients.
One pound and a half of Chestnuts.
About one pint of Milk.
A quarter of an ounce of French leaf Gelatine.
Two inches of Vanilla Pod.
Half a pint of Cream.
One ounce of Chocolate.
One gill of sweet Jelly.
One teaspoonful of Liqueur.
Half an ounce of castor Sugar.
Wipe the chestnuts; scald them in boiling water and remove the skin. Cook them till tender in milk, with the vanilla pod. When done take out the vanilla, and rub enough of the chestnuts through a wire sieve to make six ounces of purée. To this add the gelatine dissolved, the sugar, half the cream, and the liqueur.
Melt the chocolate with the jelly; strain it and let it cool a little. Mask the inside of a bordermould with jelly, and then with this mixture, and put on the ice to set. When this is set, fill the mould up with the half-set chestnut mixture, and keep it cool to set well.
Whip the rest of the cream stiff, and sweeten it. Dip the mould in tepid water, wipe it with a cloth, and turn it out on a dish. Dress the whipped cream in the centre in a pyramid.
Ice the whole chestnuts with chocolate icing (quarter of a pound of icing sugar, one ounce and a half of grated chocolate, and a quarter of a gill of water), and dish them on the border. Decorate with cream through a forcer, and serve.
A late-Victorian moulded cream that depends on a good chestnut purée and a gelatine set that is neither rubbery nor collapsing. The hinge is temperature: the chestnut mixture must be cool and just beginning to thicken before it goes into the mould, or it will slump into the chocolate lining and the two layers will marble instead of holding their line.
- Gills and pintsA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz. Half a pint of cream is 10 fl oz, of which half goes into the chestnut mixture and half is whipped for the centre; one gill of jelly is 5 fl oz.
- French leaf gelatineA quarter of an ounce is about 7 g. Modern leaf gelatine is sold by bloom strength, so weigh rather than count sheets — roughly three to four platinum-grade leaves. Soften in cold water, squeeze, and dissolve in a little of the hot chestnut milk rather than over direct heat.
- Sweet jellyThis means a clear sweetened setting jelly of the period — calf's-foot or a wine or apple jelly, firm enough to coat a chilled mould. A well-set fruit jelly or a lightly sweetened aspic-strength gelatine jelly does the same work; it is there for gloss and for carrying the chocolate lining.
- Bordermould and "on the ice"A bordermould is a plain or fluted ring mould; the recipe does not say what size, though the quantities suggest a small one. "On the ice" means an ice bath or the refrigerator; chill the mould thoroughly before masking it with jelly so the coating sets on contact.
- Chestnuts and yieldA pound and a half in the shell gives well over the six ounces of sieved purée called for. Scald and strip both the outer shell and the bitter inner skin while still hot — cold chestnuts are much harder to peel. Set aside the best whole nuts for the chocolate icing before sieving the rest.
- Castor sugar and the forcerCastor sugar is superfine sugar; ordinary granulated dissolves poorly in cold cream. A forcer is a forcing (piping) bag with a tube; the recipe does not specify which.
- Turning outTepid, not hot, water for the dip — a few seconds only. Too long and the jelly lining goes cloudy and slides.
- ServesProbably six or so as a dessert course, though the recipe does not say. Assemble the mould a day ahead if convenient, but whip the cream and ice the chestnuts on the day.
Chantilly is simply sweetened whipped cream, named for the Château de Chantilly north of Paris and often attributed to its seventeenth-century maître d'hôtel Vatel, though that association is traditional rather than documented. The chestnut half of the dish belongs to the French taste for marrons that ran through nineteenth-century pastry work and produced everything from candied marrons glacés to the sieved purée-and-cream Mont Blanc, which this bordure closely resembles with the pyramid moved to the centre of a ring. Moulded borders of this kind were a familiar exercise in high-class English cookery of the period, when lining a chilled mould with jelly, setting a second mixture inside it, and turning the whole thing out unbroken was a test of trained skill.