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Chestnut Compote

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and orange work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chestnut Compote

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Make a few slits in the chestnuts and roast them in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or in an iron saucepan over a coal fire.

  2. Remove the shells and press the chestnuts flat.

  3. Place the chestnuts in a saucepan and pour over clarified sugar.

  4. Heat them in the oven or over a gentle fire, but do not let them boil.

  5. Transfer to compote dishes, pour over sugar cooked to a thread, and add the juice of a sweet orange.

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 + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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