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Baked Chestnuts
Remove shells from one pint chestnuts, put in a bakingdish, cover with Chicken Stock highly seasoned with salt and cayenne, and bake until soft, keeping covered until nearly done. There should be a small quantity of stock in pan to serve with chestnuts.
A simple braise that stands or falls on the chestnuts themselves. The instruction that matters is the covering: the pan stays lidded until the nuts are nearly tender, then goes uncovered so the stock reduces to a spoonful of glaze rather than a puddle.
- A pint of chestnutsThe pint appears to be measured in the shell. A pint of whole in-shell chestnuts weighs somewhere in the region of 10 to 14 oz, yielding rather less than that once shelled and skinned; enough for about four as a side dish.
- Removing the shells"Remove shells" glosses over the hardest part. Score an X on the flat side, roast at 425F for 15 to 20 minutes or boil 5 minutes, then peel while hot; both the leathery outer shell and the papery inner skin must come off, and neither will budge once cool.
- Oven temperatureThe original names none. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this; the chestnuts want 35 to 45 minutes covered, then 10 to 15 uncovered to reduce the stock.
- Chicken stockA stock with real body from bones will glaze as it reduces in a way most commercial broth will not. Use homemade stock, or reduce a good boxed broth by half first, and salt cautiously since it concentrates.
- Cayenne"highly seasoned" here probably means assertive rather than incendiary. An eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne to a cup of stock is about right for that effect.
- Liquid levelCover the nuts barely. Too much stock and you are boiling chestnuts; the recipe wants only what will cook down to a sauce.
- DonenessChestnuts go from firm to mealy with little warning. Test with a skewer at 35 minutes; they should yield like a cooked potato, not collapse.
- SubstituteVacuum-packed or jarred peeled chestnuts work and skip the peeling entirely, but they are already cooked. Braise them 15 minutes at most, uncovered for the last few.
Chestnuts were a far more ordinary vegetable in the American kitchen of 1896 than they are now. The native American chestnut grew in enormous stands through the eastern forests and the nuts were gathered and sold cheaply in autumn markets, which is why this book treats them as a matter-of-fact side dish rather than as a holiday luxury. The chestnut blight, first noticed in New York in 1904, destroyed those trees over the decades that followed, and the chestnuts sold in the United States today are largely European or Asian species. That change in supply, more than any change in taste, is why a recipe like this reads as unfamiliar. The technique itself, braising a starchy nut in seasoned meat stock so it absorbs savor and finishes in its own reduced glaze, is a familiar one.