Fred, the contributor of today’s photographs, notes:
This is an impression of Castanea sativa (German: Esskastanie – “ess” meaning “eat”) which can be found in large quantities at this time of year in the forests of southern Germany … They look great and taste really well baked or roasted!
Spanish chestnut or sweet chestnut is a tree with a long human-related history. Thought to be historically distributed in southeast Europe and Asia Minor, its many uses led it to be cultivated (and naturalized) throughout much of Europe and northern Africa over the span of three thousand years. Its cultivation in North America has been restricted as it is susceptible to chestnut blight, though this is not necessarily the case for trees grown in Europe (source).
The Plants for a Future database goes into detail on the economic botany of this species: Castanea sativa. As alluded to by Fred, the plant is primarily grown for its edible nuts. When roasted, the nuts can incite people to sing holiday carols (I tried to roast some last year, but the first attempt wasn’t too successful – better to do it immediately upon purchase of the nuts rather than waiting a couple weeks was the lesson learned). The nuts are also ground into a gluten-free flour, used as a coffee substitute or used to flavour beer (source: Wikipedia – also includes more photographs of the species).
I found the chestnut consumption data via the Small Farm Center at UC Davis to be rather interesting. The per capita consumption in China of chestnuts is roughly 900g / person (2lb.), double the per capita consumption in Europe at 450g / person (1lb.). Lagging far behind is the consumption in the US – 22.5g / person (1/20 of a lb.), suggesting that what is a seasonal treat for North Americans is much more widely used as a food in China and Europe.
We are searching these nuts every autumn. We also have forests of Castanea sativa in the Pyrenees (I was also searching these in Alsace years ago).
The other simple method of eating them (instead of roasting):
Put away the brown skin (with a sharp knife), then cook them 10-15 minutes in boiling water. You can then remove the white skin easily (as long as it’s hot, take care of your fingers) and eat the nut. Personnaly I preffer them this way.
Castanea sativa – Z5 – RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
Castanea sativa – Z5-7 – A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Brickell, Cole, Zuk
Castanea sativa – “Hotter than average summers are required to produce good crops of nuts.” – Hillier Manual of Trees & Shrubs, 2003
It is important that you score them first, but a very easy way to prepare chestnuts in by microwaving them on high until it smells like chestnuts.
If you forget to cut through the skin of *each* chestnut, you may get a sticky blow-out or- if your luck is particularly bad and one of the chestnuts has a thick skin- blow the microwave door off the hinges.
In the U.S., we mostly think only of roast chestnuts. Roast chestnuts are nice, but there are only so many of them that one can eat before they lose some appeal. The reason that so many more are eaten in Europe and Asia is that they are used in many different types of recipes. I think they mostly boil them first, as Christian suggested, before using them in a recipe.
Here is a link to a page of recipes, just to give you an idea of the diversity:
The trees are very common in southern Britain, though the nuts are smaller than the cultivated types. I did notice that the flowers in spring have a rather evil smell.
Used to think of Chestnuts as a very special thing.
Haven’t even seen any for about 45 years now!
Want large photos on internet, to explain to my
9 years old daughter.
Only the nut without those parts of the plant.
A very interesting page, and the links are worth following, too.
The tradition in my original family (European immigrants) was not to roast the nuts, but to boil them (as in the first post), but with the brown skin still on. But first we would cut a little slash through the hard brown skin, so the nuts wouldn’t burst in the boiling water.