[Sca-cooks] chestnut cream

[Daniel Phelps]

Was written:

I found a can of chestnut cream imported from France in my local discount
store for fifty cents, so I couldn't pass it up. From the description of
the can, it appears to be almost a syrup. Is there anything medieval I can
use this with/on/in? Are chestnuts new world?

Latin    Castanea dentata (Marsh.) Borkh.
Spanish    Castana
French    Chataigne
German    Kastanie
Swedish    Kastanje
Arabic    Kastana
Dutch    Kastanje
Italian    Castagna
Portuguese    Castanha
Russian    Kashtan
Japanese    Kuri
Chinese    Pan Li

The American chestnut is native to the United States east of the Mississippi
River.  The Chinese chestnut is C. mollissima, the Japanese C. crenata.  The
European C. sativa. is also known as the sweet English chestnut, the Spanish
chestnut and the French chestnut.  The ancient Latin name of the genus,
Castanea is said to have come from Kastanea, a city in Pontus, Asia Minor or
from a town of the same name in Thessaly, Greece, where chestnuts were first
introduced into Europe.  Xenophon, a Greek historian of the fourth century
B.C. state that the children of Persian nobility were fattened on chestnuts.
Dioscorides in the first century A.D. called the chestnut the Sardis nut,
since the best came to Greece from Sardis in Asia Minor.  The Romans took
the chestnut to France and Britain as a flour made from ground chestnuts
provided a staple for the Roman legions.  Tis mentioned in Shakespeare's the
Taming of the Shrew.

All of this from "The Book of Edible Nuts".

Daniel