No. 3017

Croquettes of Chestnuts

Croquettes de Marrons

Select four pounds of fine, sound chestnuts; slit them on one side and put them to roast in a large perforated pan; cover and toss at times until done. They may also be cooked by placing them on a baking sheet and then in a hot oven to roast without blackening. Skin them, removing both the skins, and picking out twenty of the finest, pound the others to a fine paste. Add, while continuing to pound, two ounces of vanilla sugar and a little raw cream. Pass this preparation through a sieve and put it into a saucepan, beating into it six egg-yolks, then dry over the fire while stirring. Pour this on a baking sheet and leave till cold, then divide it into parts and of each one make an inch and a quarter diameter ball; in the center of each insert one of the roasted chestnuts split in two; mold the croquettes to the shape of a chestnut, dip them in beaten eggs, roll in white bread-crumbs and fry in very hot clear frying fat; when done, drain and sponge, besprinkle with vanilla sugar and dress on a napkin.

← No. 3016 Croquettes a la Trimalcion Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3018 Croquettes of Rice with Orange, Raspberry Sa →

For the Modern Kitchen

A chestnut-paste croquette from Ranhofer's Delmonico repertoire, shaped and breaded to look like the nut it is made from. The work is all in the peeling and in getting the paste dry enough to hold its shape.

Quantities and yieldFour pounds of chestnuts in the shell gives something over two and a half pounds of peeled meat. Twenty whole nuts are set aside for the centers, which implies twenty croquettes, though the recipe states no yield and the quantity of paste would make a good many more at an inch and a quarter.
Roasting temperatureThe recipe calls only for a "hot oven"; in modern terms somewhere around 400 to 425F. The slit is not optional: an unscored chestnut builds steam and bursts. Roast 20 to 25 minutes, until the shells curl back at the cut.
Peel them hotBoth the outer shell and the bitter inner pellicle must come off, and both release only while the nuts are hot. Work with a cloth, a few at a time, and keep the rest covered; cooled chestnuts have to be rewarmed to peel cleanly.
Vanilla sugarGranulated sugar stored a week or more with a split vanilla bean. Two ounces is about a quarter cup. Commercial vanilla sugar or caster sugar with a half teaspoon of extract stands in, though the extract adds moisture the paste does not want.
"A little raw cream""Raw" here means uncooked, fresh cream rather than anything scalded or cooked; use heavy cream, and add it a spoonful at a time. The paste should be stiff enough to hold a fingerprint, not spreadable — every extra drop of liquid has to be driven off again over the fire.
Drying the paste is the hingeAfter the yolks go in, stir constantly over moderate heat until the mixture thickens and pulls cleanly away from the sides and bottom of the pan, the way pâte à choux does. A paste left slack will split in the fryer no matter how carefully it is breaded. Spread it thin on the sheet so it cools fast, and chill it thoroughly before shaping.
Frying fat"Very hot clear frying fat" means clean, unflavored fat at 375F, deep enough to float the croquettes. Fry a test one first: below 360F the crumb coating soaks, above 390F it colors before the center warms through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
Drain and spongeLift onto paper, then blot the tops as well — "sponge" is Ranhofer's word for it. Dust with vanilla sugar only after blotting, or it dissolves into the fat, and serve at once on a folded napkin as the original directs.

A Little History

Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) as a record of what came out of the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, and this entry is characteristic of the book's dessert croquettes: a sweet paste bound with yolks, breaded and deep-fried in the same manner as a savory chicken or veal croquette. The conceit of hiding a whole roasted chestnut in the center and then molding the croquette back into the shape of a chestnut is a piece of nineteenth-century restaurant trompe-l'oeil, of a piece with the era's taste for dishes that impersonate their own ingredients. Chestnuts were a far more ordinary autumn staple then than now — American chestnut was still standing in quantity in the eastern forests, the blight not being identified until 1904 — and they turn up throughout the book as purée, as stuffing, as marrons glacés and here as a sweet entremets. Vanilla sugar, made at home by burying a bean in a jar of sugar, was the standard way of perfuming a pastry kitchen before extract became cheap and reliable.