Skip to main content
Main

Chestnut Sauce

A sauce made from chestnuts, stock, sugar, and Spanish sauce, simmered and sieved.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chestnut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald and peel the chestnuts.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the stock and sugar.

  3. Simmer until tender, about 30 minutes.

  4. Add the Spanish sauce and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Keep the sauce rather liquid, as it may thicken.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chestnut + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Provide the main body and starchy texture that thickens the sauce when puréed.
Spanish sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the sauce.
Stock
Supplies liquid that cooks the chestnuts and sets the sauce's consistency.

The step that matters

Keeping the sauce liquid. Chestnuts are starchy and continue to thicken as the purée cools and rests. Keeping the sauce thinner than you want at the end prevents it from becoming pasty.

“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.

More chestnut sauce recipes

White 5 See all 42 →

You might also like

Chestnut SoupChestnut Soup52 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes