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Fakce or Puree of Chestnuts

A chestnut puree made with roasted chestnuts, stock, butter, cream, and flavored with anisette and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fakce or Puree of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Cut off the tops of the chestnuts and roast them for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the outer and inner skins.

  3. Place the chestnuts in a pan with enough light stock to cover.

  4. Cover the pan with buttered paper.

  5. Cook for 45 minutes until dry.

Make the puree

  1. Pass the chestnuts through a wire sieve.

  2. Add cream or milk.

  3. Add butter.

  4. Add salt.

  5. Add sugar.

  6. Add anisette.

  7. Color with liquid carmine to a pale salmon shade.

  8. Add a pinch of red pepper.

  9. Serve warm or cold as a garnish for entrees.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Form the bulk of the puree, giving it its starchy, thick body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softens the puree into a spreadable texture.
Anisette
Adds a sweet, aniseed aroma that complements the chestnut flavour.

The step that matters

Cook for 45 minutes until dry. Chestnuts must be cooked until they are fully tender and most of the stock has evaporated. Excess liquid left in the chestnuts would make the puree watery and loose once it is passed through the sieve and enriched.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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

“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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