Bavarois with Chestnuts

Suppress the shells from one pound of good, fresh chestnuts; put them with some water into a saucepan and let cook on a slow fire for two hours, being careful to replace the black liquid by clean boiling water. After the chestnuts are tender, drain, skin and pound them in a mortar with half a pint of syrup at twenty-five degrees, to reduce them to a fine paste, and press this paste through a sieve into a tin basin. Put four egg-yolks into a bowl and beat them up with four ounces of sugar; dilute with a pint of boiling milk into which has been added half a vanilla bean; pour this into a saucepan and place it on the fire, beating it with a whip until it begins to thicken; then remove at once and add an ounce and a half of gelatine, softened in cold water; when this is dissolved, pass the preparation through a fine wire sieve and add it to the chestnuts in the basin, putting it on pounded ice and beating well till cold. As soon as it begins to thicken incorporate into it a quart and a half of firmly whipped and drained cream; then pour it into a channeled cylindrical mold (Fig. 148) incrusted in ice. Let it harden for an hour and a half. Just when serving dip the mold quickly into hot water and invert the cream on a cold dish, surrounding the base with fine glazed chestnuts.