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Glazed Chestnuts
Slit thirty large Italian chestnuts and set in oven on a tin for twenty minutes. Remove, shell and peel, place in a saucepan with a half pint broth, cover with water, add blade mace, two branches celery, one onion with a clove stuck in it, a half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Cover pan, let boil for twenty-five minutes, lift up chestnuts and place in saucepan with a half gill demi-glace, half gill of the chestnut broth, half ounce butter, the juice of half a lemon and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Set the pan in oven for twenty-five minutes, being very careful to frequently baste chestnuts with the liquor, remove and use as required.
A savoury garnish rather than a sweet — despite the name, these are chestnuts glazed in meat stock, meant to go alongside roast game, turkey or braised beef. Two things decide the result: getting the chestnuts peeled while still hot, and basting often enough at the end that the demi-glace reduces onto them instead of scorching in the pan.
- Peel them hotSlit each shell across the domed side before the oven goes on, and shell them the moment they are cool enough to handle. Once a chestnut cools, the inner brown skin welds itself to the nut and the whole batch turns into a half-hour of picking.
- The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon — two saltspoons of pepper is a half teaspoon. Half a pint of broth is one cup, topped up with water to cover.
- Oven heatThe book gives none. Twenty minutes to open the shells wants a hot oven, around 425F; the final glazing stage wants moderate heat, 325–350F, low enough that the small amount of liquid reduces rather than burns.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal or beef stock thickened to a syrup. Good tubs of it are sold chilled or frozen; a strongly reduced homemade beef stock will do. Do not substitute gravy granules — the point is body and gloss, not seasoning.
- Blade maceA whole flake of the lacy covering of nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. If you only have ground mace, use a pinch and remember it will not strain out. Fish the blade, celery and clove-stuck onion out before the second stage.
- Italian chestnutsThe recipe means the large sweet European chestnut (Castanea sativa), the species usually sold as fresh chestnuts. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts skip the first two stages entirely; go straight to the simmer and shorten it to about ten minutes, as they break up easily.
- Watch the simmerTwenty-five minutes at a rolling boil will reduce good chestnuts to crumbs. Keep it at a bare simmer and start testing at fifteen — they should be tender to a skewer but still whole.
- BastingThe instruction to baste frequently is the hinge of the dish. Half a cup of liquid around thirty chestnuts disappears fast; turn the chestnuts in it every five minutes or so, and pull them out when the liquor has become a clinging syrup, whatever the clock says.
- YieldThirty chestnuts serves six as a side or garnish. They are best warm and do not reheat well — the glaze goes dull and the nuts dry.
Glazed chestnuts in a meat glaze belong to the classical French garnish repertoire that ran through hotel and restaurant kitchens on both sides of the Atlantic before the First World War, where chestnuts appeared with turkey, goose, venison and braised beef far more often than in desserts. The technique here — blanch in an aromatic broth, then finish slowly in demi-glace, butter and lemon while basting — is the standard method for glazing any firm vegetable, applied to a nut that behaves like one. The specification of Italian chestnuts reflects the trade of the period: large sweet chestnuts came into American and British markets largely from Italy and southern France, and the native American chestnut, smaller and sweeter, was in these years being wiped out by the blight first identified in New York in 1904. Calling for the imported nut was practical advice that would soon become the only option.