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Purée of Chestnuts a LA Crème

A creamy chestnut purée made with white stock, heavy cream, and seasoned with salt, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and cream work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Purée of Chestnuts a LA Crème

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Strip the outer rind from the chestnuts.

  2. Boil the chestnuts in water to remove the inner peel.

Make the purée

  1. Stew the chestnuts in white stock until soft, about 1 hour.

  2. Remove the chestnuts from the stock and pound them through a wire sieve.

  3. Gradually mix the puréed chestnuts with the stock.

  4. Add the heavy cream and season with salt.

  5. Heat the mixture thoroughly and serve with croutons.

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 + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish chestnuts
Provide the main body and starch that thicken the purée when softened and sieved.
White stock
Adds liquid and savoury flavour while the chestnuts soften and loosen the purée.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pounding the chestnuts through a sieve. Chestnuts must be very soft before sieving; firm pieces leave a grainy texture. Mixing in the stock gradually keeps the purée smooth rather than lumpy or thin.

“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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