page_title: Chestnut
section_title: Culinary
hierarchical_section_title: Chestnut / Uses / Culinary
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Marchand de marrons chauds à la Porte Saint-Michel lors de la Foire Saint-André d'Avignon en 1936
context_page_description: The chestnuts are a group of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus Castanea, in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.
  The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce.
context_section_description: The fruit can be peeled and eaten raw, but it can be somewhat astringent, especially if the pellicle is not removed.
  Another method of eating the fruit involves roasting, which does not require peeling. Roasting requires scoring the fruit beforehand to prevent explosion of the fruit due to expansion. Once cooked, its texture is slightly similar to that of a baked potato, with a delicate, sweet, and nutty flavour. This method of preparation is popular in many countries, where the scored chestnuts may be cooked mixed with a little sugar.
  Chestnuts can be dried and milled into flour, which can then be used to prepare breads, cakes, pies, pancakes, pastas, polenta (known in Corsica as pulenda), or used as thickener for stews, soups, and sauces. Chestnut cake may be prepared using chestnut flour. In Corsica, the flour is fried into doughnut-like fritters called fritelli and made into necci, pattoni, castagnacci, and cialdi. The flour can be light beige like that from Castagniccia, or darker in other regions. It is a good solution for long storage of a nutritious food. Chestnut bread can stay fresh as long as two weeks.
  The nuts can also be eaten candied, boiled, steamed, deep-fried, grilled, or roasted in sweet or savory recipes. They can be used to stuff vegetables, poultry, fowl, and other edibles. They are available fresh, dried, ground, or canned (whole or in puree).
  Candied chestnuts (whole chestnuts candied in sugar syrup, then iced) are sold under the French name marrons glacés or Turkish name kestane şekeri ("sugared chestnuts"). They appeared in France in the 16th century. Towards the end of 19th century, Lyon went into a recession with the collapse of the textile market, notably silk. Clément Faugier, a civil engineer, was looking for a way to revitalize the regional economy. In 1882 at Privas, he invented the technology to make marrons glacés on an industrial scale (although a great number of the more than 20 necessary steps from harvest to the finished product are still accomplished manually). Chestnuts are picked in autumn, and candied from the start of the following summer for the ensuing Christmas. Thus, the marrons glacés eaten at Christmas are those picked the year before.
  In Hungarian cuisine, cooked chestnuts are puréed, mixed with sugar (and usually rum), forced through a ricer, and topped with whipped cream to make a dessert called gesztenyepüré (chestnut purée). In Swiss cuisine, a similar dish made with kirsch and butter is called vermicelles. A French version is known as "Mont Blanc".
  A fine granular sugar can be obtained from the fermentation of the juice, as well as a beer; the roasted fruit provides a coffee substitute. Parmentier, who among other things was a famous potato promoter, extracted sugar from chestnuts and sent a chestnut sugarloaf weighing several pounds to the Academy of Lyon. The continental blockade following shortly after (1806–1814) increased the research into developing chestnuts as a source of sugar, but Napoleon chose beets instead.
  Sweet chestnuts are not easy to peel when cold. One kilogram of untainted chestnuts yields about 700 g of shelled chestnuts.
caption: A hot chestnut seller in Avignon, 1936
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:07 17:06:43", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image ExifOffset": "2236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4534", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7009", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:05:07 15:27:32", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:05:07 15:27:32", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "811", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}