No. 3118

Souffle of Chestnuts with Vanilla

Souffle de Marrons a la Vanille

Skin half a pound of raw chestnuts, then grate them; pound three ounces of almonds with four ounces of powdered vanilla sugar (No. 3165). Beat in a bowl four ounces of fresh butter, mixing into it six or seven egg-yolks, and when the preparation is frothy add the chestnuts, sugar and almonds, then five or six beaten whites. Pour all this into a buttered souffle pan (Fig. 182) and cook it for three-quarters of an hour in a slack oven; glaze over with sugar before removing and serve without delay.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A dense, almond-rich soufflé closer to a baked pudding than the airy modern kind, which is why it survives three-quarters of an hour in the oven. Two things decide whether it works: getting the raw chestnuts finely grated, and not overbaking past the point where the centre still trembles.

Skinning raw chestnutsRanhofer means the inner brown pellicle as well as the shell, and on a raw nut it clings. Score the flat side, cover with boiling water for a few minutes, and work in small batches — once they cool the skin welds back on. Half a pound in the shell yields noticeably less than half a pound peeled; buy about 12 oz whole to be safe.
Grated, not choppedGrating raw chestnut on a fine grater gives a damp meal that disperses through the batter. A food processor will bruise it into paste unless you pulse; the texture of the finished soufflé depends on this being fine and even.
Vanilla sugar (No. 3165)In this book vanilla sugar is sugar pounded and sifted with vanilla. Blitz a split pod with the 4 oz of sugar in a spice grinder and sieve out the fibres; vanilla extract stirred into sugar is a poorer substitute but workable.
Pounding the almondsThree ounces of blanched almonds pounded with the sugar — the sugar is there to stop the nuts oiling into butter. A food processor does this well; stop while it is still sandy.
A slack ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "slack" is usually read as somewhere around 300–325°F. Anything hotter risks setting and cracking the outside before the centre of a batter this heavy is cooked. The recipe's three-quarters of an hour suits a single large dish; smaller moulds will need considerably less.
The egg countsSix or seven yolks against five or six whites is deliberate — this is a rich, custardy soufflé, not a light one. Whip the whites to soft peaks only; stiff whites will not fold into a batter this thick without breaking down.
The panButter it heavily and dust with sugar rather than flour, which gives the climb something to grip and a thin caramel crust. Fill no more than three-quarters.
Glazing with sugarDust the top with powdered sugar in the last minutes and pass it under a broiler for seconds, watching constantly — Ranhofer's kitchen used a salamander. The sugar should lacquer, not burn.
Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest something in the region of six servings. "Without delay" is not rhetoric; a soufflé begins to sink soon after it leaves the oven.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written down, numbered and cross-referenced like a technical manual — hence the pointer to No. 3165 for the vanilla sugar rather than a recipe repeated in full. Chestnuts had a firm place in the French sweet kitchen Ranhofer trained in: the nut was cheap peasant food across Corsica, the Limousin and northern Italy, and confectioners in Lyon and Paris turned it into the luxury goods — marrons glacés, purées, crèmes — that made it fashionable at table by the second half of the nineteenth century. Using the chestnuts raw and grated rather than boiled and puréed is the less common treatment, and it is what keeps this soufflé from being merely a sweetened purée lightened with egg; the nut cooks in the batter and holds a faint grain. Vanilla, still expensive and hand-pollinated, was the standard partner for chestnut then as now.