Chestnut Forcemeat

Ingredients

• 6 oz chestnuts
• 1/3 pint strong veal gravy
• 3 oz bacon or fresh butter
• 2 oz dry bread-crumbs
• 1 teaspoonful grated lemon rind
• 1 teaspoonful salt
• 0.5 teaspoonful mace or nutmeg
• cayenne pepper
• 2 or 3 egg yolks

Instructions

1. Strip the outer skin from the chestnuts and drop them into a saucepan of hot water over the fire for a minute or two.
2. Blanch them like almonds, then place in cold water as they are peeled.
3. Dry them in a cloth and weigh them.
4. Stew the six ounces of chestnuts very gently for fifteen to twenty minutes in just sufficient strong veal gravy to cover them.
5. Take them up, drain them on a sieve, and allow to cool.
6. When cold, pound the chestnuts perfectly smooth with half their weight of rasped bacon (cleared of all rust or fibre) or an equal quantity of fresh butter.
7. Add the dry bread-crumbs, grated lemon rind, salt, mace or nutmeg, a moderate quantity of cayenne, and the unbeaten yolks of two or three eggs to the pounded mixture.
8. Mould the mixture into cakes using a knife, spoon, or fingers dipped in flour.
9. Dredge more flour over the cakes and press it upon them.
10. Slowly fry the cakes for ten to fifteen minutes until golden.