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Chestnut Soup
2 cups chestnuts, shelled and blanched 3 cups cold water 2 cups scalded milk 2 tablespoons onion, sliced 4 tablespoons shortening 2 tablespoons flour 1/8 teaspoon celery salt salt cayenne nutmeg 1 cup milk or cream Place chestnuts in cold water, bring to boiling point and cook until tender, press through a sieve, and add scalded milk. Cook onion in shortening 5 minutes, add flour, seasonings and chestnut mixture. Cook 5 minutes, add milk or cream, strain and serve. Note.--To shell chestnuts, make a cross on either side of the nut with a sharp knife. Put one teaspoon melted shortening in dripping pan; add chestnuts and cook in oven until shells come off easily. Serves 8.
A smooth chestnut velouté built on a small roux, thinned with milk and finished with cream. The whole thing depends on getting the chestnuts fully peeled and fully soft before they ever meet the milk.
- Buy enough chestnutsTwo cups of shelled, blanched nuts is roughly 10-12 oz, which means starting with about a pound of chestnuts in the shell, or a little more to allow for bad ones. Vacuum-packed or jarred peeled chestnuts work directly and skip the whole shelling step; frozen peeled chestnuts are the next best thing.
- "Blanched" means skinnedShelled removes the glossy brown outer shell; blanched removes the papery inner pellicle clinging to the grooves. Any pellicle left behind is bitter and stringy, and it will not go through the sieve. Peel the nuts while they are still hot, in small batches, returning the rest to the warm pan.
- Oven for the shelling trickThe note gives no temperature. A hot oven, around 400F for 10-15 minutes, until the cut edges curl back, will loosen the shells. The cuts must go through the shell, not just scratch it, or the nuts can burst.
- ShorteningThe 4 tablespoons here are a period stand-in for butter. Butter is better in a soup that has no other fat for flavor; the roux behaves the same either way.
- Cook the roux properlyNote that the recipe adds the flour and the chestnut mixture together and then cooks five minutes, so the flour is not cooked dry first; keep the heat gentle after the flour goes in to lose the raw-flour taste, and low enough that the onion does not colour.
- Don't boil after the creamOnce the final cup of milk or cream is in, hold the soup below a simmer. A hard boil on a flour-thickened dairy soup will curdle it and drive a skin onto the surface.
- Strain last, season lastPush the soup through a fine sieve or blitz it and then strain; the texture should be pourable, not gluey. Add the salt, cayenne and nutmeg by taste at that point, since the chestnuts vary in sweetness and the celery salt already carries sodium.
- YieldEight servings as written, but these are soup-course portions of about 3/4 cup. As a main-course bowl it will serve four or five.