Soiled Chestnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Make a slight incision in the outer skin of each chestnut to prevent bursting.
Boil
Place the chestnuts in a pot of boiling water with the salt.
Boil the chestnuts for 30 minutes to 1 hour, checking occasionally until soft.
Serve
Drain the chestnuts and wipe them with a coarse cloth.
Serve immediately in a hot napkin.
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
What each ingredient does
- Chestnuts
- Main ingredient; boiling softens their starchy flesh until tender enough to eat.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the chestnuts as they cook in the boiling water.
The step that matters
Boil until soft, checking occasionally. Chestnut cooking time varies with size and freshness, so the nuts can be undercooked and hard or overcooked and mushy. Checking for softness during the 30 minutes to 1 hour boil lets the cook judge when the starch has fully gelatinised.
“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.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.