Compote of Chestnuts

Ingredients

• forty or fifty large Chestnuts
• half the rind of an orange or lemon
• a quarter of a stick of vanilla
• 4oz. of crushed loaf sugar
• the juice of one lemon
• § gill of orange-flower water

Method

1. 1

   Peel and boil Chestnuts until skins come off easily.

2. 2

   Simmer in syrup for 20 minutes.

3. 3

   Strain syrup, flavor, and reduce.

4. 4

   Pour syrup over Chestnuts and serve.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The encyclopædia of practical cookery (1890) by Theodore Francis Garrett, page 310. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Compote of Chestnuts. — (1) Peel the brown skin off forty or fifty large Chestnuts, and put them in boiling water for a few minutes until the light skin comes off easily when rubbed in a cloth ; then put them in a large copper sugar-boiler so that they lay flat at the bottom, cover them with a syrup at lfiOdeg. Fahr., and let them simmer gently for twenty minutes. When they are done, strain the syrup off through a conical strainer, and reduce it to 30deg. Fahr. ; before reducing the syrup, flavour it with half the rind of an orange or lemon, cut very thin, or a quarter of a stick of vanilla. Put the Chestnuts in a compote-dish, strain the syrup over them, and serve. (2) Boast the Chestnuts, and when they are done peel oft' both the skins. Put 4oz. of crushed loaf sugar into a sauce- pan with oply as much water as it will absorb, put in the Chestnuts, and toss them about over a slow fire. When they are well coated with the syrup, turn them on to a dish, and dust them over with caster sugar. Serve the compote when cold. (3) Take about a hundred Chestnuts, remove their outer skins, and put them into a saucepan with about 3 teacupfuls of bran, a lemon cut into pieces, and some water. Place the saucepan on the fire, and let the Chestnuts cook until they are soft enough for a pin to go into them easily ; then rub For details respecting Culinary Processes, Utensils, Chestnuts — continued. off the second skin, and throw them into cold water with the juice of a lemon in it. Clarify and boil gently 1Mb. of sugar to small thread degree — that is, when a drop of the sugar put on the end of the thumb is touched with the tip of the forefinger, and the finger and thumb opened again, draws to a fine thread, and on breaking leaves a drop both on thumb and finger (see Sugar-boiling). When the sugar has boiled to this degree, drain the Chestnuts, and put them into it together with the juice of one lemon and § gill of orange-flower water

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.