That old chestnut

“But we give that fruit to our swine in England, which is amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries”. So said the 17th-century diarist Tohn Evelyn of the sweet chestnut. With but a few additions to our sweet chestnut kitchen repertoire, little has changed in the past few centuries, with stuffing and “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” being all that comes to our collective mind.

Perhaps this is down to our nuts ripening small and infrequently; we could never rely on them and thus have no tradition of using them. I have strolled in the chestnut coppices