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Roasted Chestnuts
Split the skin on one side of some chestnuts, put in a pan with a perforated bottom, stand over a moderate fire, and when they are done wrap them in a cloth for a few minutes. Serve them with salt and butter.
A method more than a recipe, and the two details that matter are the slit and the rest in the cloth.
- Score deeply, not just the skinThe instruction to "split the skin on one side" means cutting through both the glossy shell and the papery pellicle beneath, ideally in an X or a long slash across the domed side. A shallow scratch will not vent the steam and the nut can burst.
- The perforated panThis is a chestnut roaster — a long-handled pan with a pierced bottom that sits directly over coals, letting flame and smoke reach the nuts. A cast-iron skillet on a grill or gas burner is the nearest modern stand-in; a sheet pan in a 425F oven for 20-25 minutes gives similar results without the char.
- "A moderate fire"Over live coals this means a bed that has burned down past flames, hot enough to hold your hand over for four or five seconds, not one or two. Shake or stir every few minutes so the shells scorch evenly rather than on one face.
- When they are doneThe cut edges peel back and curl, the shell darkens, and the flesh gives when pressed. Figure 15-25 minutes depending on size and heat. Undercooked chestnuts are chalky and hard to peel.
- The cloth is the whole trickWrapping the hot nuts in a towel traps steam, which loosens the pellicle from the meat. Skip it and you will fight that bitter inner skin off every nut. Five to ten minutes is enough, and peel while they are still warm.
- Buy the right nutEuropean or cultivated chestnuts (Castanea sativa and hybrids), sold in autumn and early winter. They are perishable and go moldy or hollow in storage — reject any that rattle, feel light, or show soft spots. Horse chestnuts are a different plant entirely and are not edible.
- YieldAbout 1 lb in the shell serves three or four as a nibble. Salt and softened butter at the table, as written; the butter clings better if the nuts are peeled hot.
Street-roasted chestnuts were a fixture of European and American winter cities long before this recipe was printed, sold from perforated pans over charcoal braziers by vendors in Naples, Paris and, by the late nineteenth century, lower Manhattan. This entry records the plainest treatment of a nut that was then ordinary household fare rather than hotel invention. Worth noting that at the time the American chestnut still stood in eastern forests in enormous numbers; the blight was identified in New York in 1904 and destroyed most of them within a few decades, and the nuts sold today are largely imported or from resistant hybrids.