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Chestnut Croquettes
Mash enough large French chestnuts to make one cupful. Moisten with two tablespoons of thick cream, beat in the yolks of two eggs, a teaspoon of sugar and a little lemon juice. Mix all these ingredients thoroughly, shape in little pyramids or in balls, dip in crumbs, egg, and then again in crumbs, and fry in deep fat. Drain on blotting paper.
A small, rich garnish rather than a main dish, which is why it sits among the sauces and accompaniments. The mixture is soft, so the handling matters more than anything else here.
- Chill before shapingChestnut purée loosened with cream and yolks is slack at room temperature and will slump or burst in the fat. Refrigerate the mixture until firm, shape, then chill the shaped pyramids again before crumbing.
- "French chestnuts"These are large sweet chestnuts, sold now as marrons; the recipe wants them for size and ease of peeling. Something over half a pound of chestnuts in the shell should give the cupful of mash called for. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts work and save an hour of peeling; unsweetened canned purée works too, though it is wetter, so hold back some of the cream.
- PeelingScore each nut, boil or roast briefly, and peel while hot — both the shell and the bitter inner skin must come away, and both cling once the nut cools.
- Thick creamHeavy or double cream, not the thin pouring cream of the period's dairy. Two tablespoons is a starting point; stop adding liquid while the purée still holds a shape.
- The crumb orderCrumbs, then egg, then crumbs, as written. The first dry coat presumably gives the loose mixture something for the egg to grip. Modern practice usually uses flour for that first layer, which does the same job.
- Deep fatAbout 375F. Lower and the croquettes drink oil before the crust sets; higher and the coating colors before the inside warms through. The chestnut itself is already cooked, but the two raw yolks binding the mixture are not, so let the centre heat through rather than pulling them the moment the crust browns.
- Blotting paperPaper towels on a rack. Draining on a flat surface steams the underside of the crust.
- Yield and useAbout a dozen small croquettes. Serve them hot around roast game, venison, turkey or braised meats; the teaspoon of sugar and the lemon juice give a faint sweetness rather than making these a plain savory side.
Chestnut purée as an accompaniment to game and roast fowl is long-established French kitchen practice, and the croquette — a bound purée, breaded and fried — is one of the standard ways nineteenth-century professional cookery turned a soft mixture into something that could be plated in numbers. Calling the nuts "French chestnuts" reflects a real distinction on the American market of the period: the native American chestnut was small and fiddly, while the imported European marron was large enough to peel and mash efficiently. Chestnut blight later all but erased the American tree, leaving imports as the practical source, which is still broadly the case. That the Butterick book — issued by a pattern and fashion company — includes a molded, twice-crumbed garnish shaped into pyramids suggests something about how much restaurant presentation home cooks of the era were expected to attempt.