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Soup-puree of Chestnuts

A creamy soup made from roasted chestnuts blended with broth, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Soup-puree of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Roast the chestnuts until the shells are browned.

  2. Put the roasted chestnuts in boiling water to peel off the inner skin.

  3. Place the peeled chestnuts in a saucepan and cover with broth.

  4. Cover the pan and cook slowly until the chestnuts are tender.

  5. Rub the chestnuts through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

Make the soup

  1. Add the thickened chicken or veal broth and stir until it boils.

  2. Add the Madeira wine and season to taste.

  3. Let it boil slowly for 30 minutes, then skim the surface.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve and keep warm.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add a piece of butter and garnish with asparagus tops.

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 + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chicken + asparagustop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Chestnut + chickentop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + asparagustop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Starch and body that thicken the soup into a smooth purée when rubbed through a sieve.
Thickened chicken or veal broth
Provides the liquid base and savory depth of the soup.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic richness to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat, giving a rounder mouthfeel and richer flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub the chestnuts through a fine sieve. Chestnuts must be fully tender before sieving, or the purée stays grainy and lumpy. Pressing them while hot helps them pass through smoothly, giving the silky texture the soup depends on.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, madeira wine, butter, asparagus):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, madeira wine, butter, asparagus. 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.

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