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Of Chestnuts

A stew made from boiled chestnuts simmered in broth with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Place chestnuts in a kettle.

  2. Cover the chestnuts with cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Cook the chestnuts until tender.

  5. Shell the cooked chestnuts.

  6. Return the shelled chestnuts to the kettle.

  7. Cover the chestnuts with broth.

  8. Boil the chestnuts for 20 minutes.

  9. Drain the chestnuts.

  10. Pound the chestnuts.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the chestnuts with the broth in a stewpan.

  2. Add a glass of warm broth.

  3. Boil gently for 3 hours.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Mix in crushed sugar.

  6. Add a few drops of cold water.

  7. Skim off the fat.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Form the body of the stew and thicken it when pounded and simmered.
Broth
Provides the liquid that cooks and softens the chestnuts into a stew.
Crushed sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savory broth and chestnuts.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the chestnuts breaking down slowly and the stew from scorching or reducing too fast. A hard boil can make it stick to the pan and turn grainy.

“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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