Skip to main content
Main

Chestnuts a LA Maitre D' Hotel

Chestnuts à la Maître d'Hôtel is a chestnut dish cooked with butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chestnut and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chestnuts a LA Maitre D' Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Boil the chestnuts for 30 minutes, ensuring there are no wormy or imperfect ones.

  2. Remove the shells and skins, then chop the chestnut meat finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and stir in the chopped chestnuts, cooking for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Slowly pour in the hot milk while stirring until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolk. Do not cook after adding the yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve in a border made of the boiled rice.

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.

  1. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Chestnut + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Provide the main bulk and nutty, starchy body of the dish.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture when heated gently.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour when the chestnuts are cooked.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the chestnuts together.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can scramble if it gets too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before adding it keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, rice, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, rice, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesChestnut SoupChestnut Soup52 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes