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Puree of Chestnuts a LA Cr&Me

A creamy chestnut puree made with stock, cream, and 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 ↓

Puree of Chestnuts a LA Cr&Me

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Remove the outer rind from the chestnuts.

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

Cook and purée

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

  2. Remove the chestnuts from the stock and mash them through a fine sieve.

  3. Gradually mix the chestnut puree with the stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the heavy cream and season with salt.

  2. Heat the mixture until very hot 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 starchy base that becomes thick and smooth when mashed.
White stock
Cooks the chestnuts until soft and thins the purée to a pourable texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Stewing the chestnuts until soft. Chestnuts must be fully softened before sieving; undercooked chestnuts stay grainy and will not purée smoothly. Starch softens as it is cooked in liquid, so the chestnuts need enough time in the stock.

“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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