Name: Sweet Puree of Chestnuts
Ingredients: 30 large French chestnuts; ½ cup sugar; 3 pints whipped and drained cream; ½ cup water; 1 tablespoon wine; 2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Puree of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

Shell the chestnuts.
Boil them in water for 10 minutes.
Remove the thin brown skins.
Return the chestnuts to the pot with enough water to barely cover them.
Boil until tender enough to crush between your thumb and finger.
Drain the chestnuts.
Pound and sift the chestnuts.

Make the purée

In a separate pot, boil ½ cup sugar in ½ cup water until it spins a thread.
Add the sifted chestnuts.
Cook for about 10 minutes until the puree is firm.

Shape and serve

Press the mixture through a potato ricer in a circle on a flat glass dish without pressing it down.
Let it cool until serving time.
Heap the whipped cream in the center.
Serve with wafers.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Chestnut + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chestnut + creamtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together643 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chestnut + winetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together252 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts: Form the bulk of the purée, giving it its starchy, tender body once cooked and crushed.
Sugar: Sweetens the purée and, boiled to a syrup, helps bind the chestnuts into a firm mass.
Whipped cream: Adds richness and a light, airy contrast to the dense chestnut purée.

The step that matters

Cooking the purée until firm. Cooking the sifted chestnuts in the sugar syrup drives off excess moisture and thickens the mixture. If it is undercooked it will stay loose and slump when pressed through the ricer; if overcooked it can become dry and stiff.