Both savoury and sweet, it’s reminiscent of rice pudding, bread sauce, Sunday roast stuffing and cheesy risotto

In her 1845 book Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton has six recipes for chestnuts: a soup, a stuffing, a stew, with sausages, as part of a wonderful-sounding custard, and also boiled, noting that some chestnuts “require to be boiled nearly or quite an hour, others little more than half the time: the cook should try them occasionally”. Once they are soft, she suggests draining, wiping with a coarse cloth and sending them to the table quickly in a hot napkin. This makes me think of another table, and of a man so frustrated by the stubborn, leathery skin of a boiled chestnut that it pinged out of his hand and hit another man just below his eye. As apologies and ice were offered, the injured man’s wife noted that roasting chestnuts was much better, at which point someone else recalled how they had once watched a chestnut, which seemed to be quietly roasting in a perforated pan, explode and half of it hit the ceiling. But back to Eliza’s soup.

It was the first recipe I made from her book, actually my mum’s book and on extended loan. The recipe involves mashing boiled chestnuts with stock, seasoning them with mace and cayenne, and finishing with cream for a wonderful rich, velvety soup, of which this week’s recipe is a variation. It is also inspired by a Piemontese minestra of riso, latte e castagne (rice, milk and chestnuts). There are three options for this soup, and none of them is dangerous: 500g whole fresh chestnuts or 200g dried chestnuts (both of which need preparation), or 250g cooked, peeled chestnuts, which are ready to go.