Chestnuts with Chocolate Cream

The book gives quantities only; the method is implied by the title. Read it as two mixtures: a sweetened chestnut paste, and a chocolate whipped cream spooned over it.

• AssemblyBeat the mashed chestnuts with the 4 tablespoons sugar, the salt, 4 tablespoons cream and the sherry to a smooth paste and divide among glasses. Whip the cup of heavy cream with the 3 tablespoons sugar and the vanilla or maraschino, fold in the melted chocolate, and pile it on top.
• The hinge: chocolate into cold creamMelted chocolate hitting cold whipped cream seizes into gritty flecks. Let it cool to barely warm, then fold a spoonful of the whipped cream into the chocolate first to slacken it before folding that back into the rest.
• Lowney's Premium ChocolateLowney's, of Boston, sold this as a baking chocolate in cakes, and it appears to have been unsweetened. Four tablespoons melted is somewhere around 2 to 3 ounces by weight; use unsweetened chocolate, not chocolate chips or drinking chocolate.
• "Teaspoon salt"A fraction appears to have dropped out in printing. A full teaspoon in a cup of chestnut paste would be inedible; treat it as a pinch to about a quarter teaspoon.
• Powdered sugarIn American books of this period "powdered sugar" generally meant a sugar ground finer than granulated rather than the modern cornstarch-laden confectioners' sugar. Either works here; confectioners' dissolves faster into the cream.
• The chestnutsScore and roast or boil chestnuts, peel while hot including the inner skin, then simmer in a little milk or water until soft enough to mash and press through a sieve. A pound in the shell should give at least the cup called for.