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Chestnut Custard
Roast well three pounds of chestnuts, peel and skin them, and cut off any parts that are colored by the fire. Put them into a mortar and pound until they form a smooth paste, together with one pound of butter; then add the yolks of twelve well-beaten eggs with three-quarters of a pound of powdered white sugar, and a little salt; mix in slowly one-half pint of whipped cream, and finally the whites of one dozen eggs beaten to a stiff froth; this froth must be added gradually and stirred very gently. When all is mixed, put the custard into a saucepan, place it over a slow fire, and stir until it thickens, not allowing it to boil.
A very large stirred custard built on a chestnut and butter base, closer to a warm chestnut cream than to a set baked custard. Everything depends on keeping it below a simmer.
- Never let it boilWith twelve yolks and a pound of butter, the mixture will curdle the moment it approaches a simmer. Cook it in a double boiler or a heavy pan over the lowest heat, stirring constantly, and pull it at 170-180F when it coats a spoon.
- Chestnut yieldThree pounds of chestnuts in the shell gives roughly 2 to 2 1/4 lb of peeled meat. Score each nut before roasting and peel while still hot; the inner pellicle grips hard once the nuts cool.
- The mortarA food processor does the pounding in a minute. Work the warm chestnuts to a paste first, then add the butter in pieces so it emulsifies rather than smearing.
- "Powdered white sugar"In 1896 this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Use superfine (caster) sugar; three-quarters of a pound is about 1 3/4 cups.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup, measured before whipping. Whip it only to soft peaks, since it is going into a warm mixture that will be stirred over heat regardless.
- The beaten whitesTwelve whites folded into a custard that is then stirred over a flame will largely deflate. Treat them as lightening rather than leavening, and fold with a spatula off the heat before the pan goes on the stove.
- Yield and servingThis makes a great deal, on the order of 16 to 20 small portions. Serve it warm in cups, or chill it in ramekins, where the butter will set it firm enough to spoon.
- A safety netIf the custard does begin to grain, take it off the heat at once and beat it hard, or pass it through a sieve. The starch carried in the chestnut puree, along with the sugar and butter, raises the temperature at which the yolks will set, but the margin is not wide and the mixture should never be pushed toward a simmer.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, put his name to a large compendium of hotel and household cookery in 1896, and the chestnut dishes in it reflect how ordinary the nut then was on American tables. Chestnuts arrived in autumn by the bushel, cheap enough to roast three pounds for a single dessert, and the blight that would erase the American chestnut from eastern forests was not identified until the following decade. The technique here is straight out of the French professional kitchen: a puree pounded in a mortar, enriched with butter and yolks, and cooked to the nappe stage as a creme anglaise would be, with beaten whites folded in for lightness. It sits alongside the marrons glaces and Mont Blanc of the same period, all of them ways of turning a bulky, starchy nut into something a hotel dining room could plate.