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Pommes Aux Marrons
1067. Boil some chestnuts until they are soft; pulp them, and add a little white sugar and lemon-juice. With this line the inside of a tart-shape, or cake-mould, thickly buttered; then put in a good layer of pulped apples, sweetened and seasoned with powdered cinnamon and nutmeg; over this spread more chestnut paste, and again some apple; proceed thus until your mould is full; squeeze in some lemon juice to fill up the interstices, and bake in a quick oven. Turn it out as you would a cake. 1
A layered pudding of chestnut paste and spiced apple baked in a buttered mould and turned out like a cake. The recipe gives no quantities, so treat the proportions as a matter of judgement and work by texture.
- The hinge: both purées must be stiffChestnut pulp and apple pulp that are at all wet will slump and the pudding will collapse when turned out. Cook the apples down to a thick marmalade that holds a shape on the spoon, and mash the chestnuts to a firm paste rather than a cream.
- A quick ovenConventionally taken as a hot oven, somewhere around 400-425F (200-220C). The recipe gives neither temperature nor time; for a filled mould of about a quart, expect something in the region of 30-40 minutes, and judge by the edges shrinking slightly from the tin rather than by the clock.
- ChestnutsAbout 1 lb of fresh chestnuts in the shell yields a scant 2 cups of pulp. Score and boil them, then peel while hot -- both the shell and the inner brown skin must come away. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts (about 12 oz) are a fair substitute; simmer them briefly to soften before pulping.
- Tart-shape or cake-mouldAny plain metal mould with sloping sides that will release cleanly -- a charlotte mould, a deep sandwich tin, an ovenproof basin. Butter it heavily as directed; the sugar in both layers will catch.
- Sugar and lemonQuantities are left to the cook. Start with 2-3 tablespoons of sugar to each cup of chestnut pulp and the juice of half a lemon, tasting as you go: the lemon is doing the work of keeping a very starchy, sweet pudding from tasting flat.
- The lemon juice poured in at the endThis is meant to run down into the gaps between layers. Use it sparingly, a tablespoon or two, or the base will be soggy where it pools.
- Turning outLet the mould stand 10 minutes before inverting so the layers firm up, then run a thin knife round the edge. Serve warm with cream; it also eats well cold, cut in wedges.
- YieldDepending on the size of the mould, probably around six.
Chestnuts and apples are a long-standing autumn pairing in northern Europe, and the French title here may be doing what French titles often did in mid-Victorian English cookery books: signalling that the dish belonged to the polite dessert course rather than the nursery. The construction is close to a charlotte or a moulded apple pudding, but with chestnut paste standing in for bread or pastry. Chestnuts were imported into Britain from southern Europe in the winter months, and cookery writing of the period treats boiled chestnut pulp as a thickener and stuffing base; the recipe's silence on weights is typical of its date.