No. 3465

Ice Cream with Roasted or Boiled Chestnuts

Creme aux Marrons Rotis ou Bouillis

With Roasted Chestnuts.—Split the chestnuts on their sides, roast and skin; put them with a pound of sugar into a copper pan, adding three gills of water; cook the sugar to three hundred and thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, or a little above the "crack;" pour it on a marble and as soon as cold pound with a small quantity of cream; place it in a tinned basin with fifteen egg-yolks, a quart of cream and the quarter of a vanilla bean. Set the basin on a slow fire to cook the mixture without boiling and as soon as it covers the spoon remove from the fire, cool, strain and freeze.

With Boiled Chestnuts.—Suppress the hard outer shell and red inside skin from a pound of chestnuts; boil them in milk with a little vanilla, and when tender rub through a sieve. Pour this puree into a vessel and dilute with a gill of vanilla cream No. 1 (No. 3458); strain, cool and freeze, working it vigorously, and when smooth and firm mix in half as much very firm and slightly sweetened whipped cream and half a gill of maraschino.

← No. 3464 Ice Cream with Pignons, Brazilian Nuts, Waln Ices & Ice Creams No. 3466 Ice Cream Without Cooking →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two chestnut ice creams: the first builds flavor through a hard-cracked sugar and chestnut praline, the second through a milk-poached chestnut puree lightened with whipped cream. Both assume a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt.

The hinge: 338°F sugarRanhofer's "a little above the crack" is the whole point of the first version — the syrup is taken past hard crack toward caramel, then set on marble and pounded with the chestnuts into a praline paste. Use a digital thermometer and pull it at 338°F; much further and the caramel starts to taste burnt.
GillsA gill here is half a cup, so three gills of water is 1½ cups, and the gill of vanilla cream in the second version is ½ cup. The half gill of maraschino is ¼ cup.
Marble and mortarAn oiled sheet pan or silicone mat replaces the marble slab. Rather than pounding in a mortar, break the cold praline into shards and grind it in a food processor, adding the small quantity of cream only as needed to bring it to a paste.
Tinned basinRanhofer sets the tinned basin directly on a slow fire; a double boiler is the safer modern equivalent. Use stainless steel over simmering water — the tin lining is there precisely so the eggs never touch bare copper.
"Covers the spoon"That is nappe: the custard coats the back of a spoon and holds a drawn line, roughly 170–180°F. Fifteen yolks to a quart of cream sets quickly, so pull it early and strain at once.
MaraschinoHe means true maraschino — a dry, clear cherry-pit liqueur such as Luxardo — not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The alcohol also keeps the second version from freezing bone hard.
ChestnutsA pound of fresh in-shell chestnuts yields roughly 12 oz peeled. Vacuum-packed or jarred cooked chestnuts work for the boiled version; for the roasted version buy them raw so the shells split and the skins slip.
FreezingChurn in an ice cream maker, then cure in the freezer for a few hours. The second version specifies folding in the whipped cream and maraschino after the base is smooth and firm — fold by hand, off the machine, or the volume collapses.
YieldNeither version is portioned. The first comes to roughly 2 quarts; the second is considerably smaller — a pound of puree, a gill of cream, half as much whipped cream and half a gill of maraschino is about a quart once churned.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section runs to well over a hundred numbered formulas — an index of what a fashionable American restaurant could produce once commercial ice harvesting made frozen desserts a year-round item rather than a winter luxury. Chestnuts belonged firmly to the French repertoire Ranhofer trained in: marrons were candied, pureed into crème de marrons, and by the late nineteenth century sold roasted on the streets of Paris and New York alike. The first version here is essentially chestnut praline in disguise — the same technique used for almond nougatine, applied to a nut that goes soft rather than crisp, which is why the sugar has to carry the brittleness. Chestnuts were a French crop as much as an Italian one, grown in the Ardèche and the Lyonnais; maraschino, by contrast, came from the Dalmatian coast, and had long since become a staple of the French pastry kitchen.