Regency Recipe of the Week – Chestnut Biscuits

This week I tried a new recipe – pasta with chestnuts and bacon. It was delicious, sweet and salt and very seasonal and warming, and I had half a packet of chestnuts left over so I had a look in my historical recipe books for something to do with them and came up with Antonin Careme's Small Chestnut Biscuits.

Antonin Careme was for a time the Prince Regent's own chef and you can read all about him in Ian Kelly's biography Cooking For Kings.

Roast 36 chestnuts in the cinders (or in my case buy them already cooked!), clean them and pound together six ounces of the chestnuts with two ounces of butter until the mixture is so fine it can be passed through a sieve.  Mix together four ounces of flour and three ounces of pounded sugar. Make a hollow in the middle and add two ounces of fresh butter, the chestnut mixture, an egg and a pinch of salt. Form into a smooth paste. Make them into rounds the size of a walnut and lay them on a buttered baking tray.  Glaze with an egg. Brown in a medium oven then crisp them up in a slow oven.

Eat warm with a cup of tea and enjoy!

©2010 Nicola Cornick. All Rights Reserved.

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