The Chestnut in All Its Guises
The fruit, the flour, the sugar, but also the leaf, the flower, the undergrowth and the wood: one single tree, read from canopy to roots.
In this feature, there are two cheeses, a coppa and four honeys. Not one contains chestnut. Yet they owe everything to the tree that bears it: its leaf, its flower, its undergrowth, its wood. The chestnut tree long sustained poor mountain lands, those where wheat struggled to grow; it has left behind dry-stone terraces, drying sheds, mills, and a way of cooking based on flour. This feature reads it from canopy to roots, one part after another.
Before delving in, a question of words. The kernel of the châtaigne is divided; that of the marron is single, in one piece. It remains intact when both its skins are removed, and it is the marron that is candied to make a marron glacé.
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The fruit
The flour
The sugar
The leaf
The flower
The undergrowth
The wood
When the burrs fall
The fruit
The burr and its achenes
Everywhere, the same nickname returns: the bread tree. In the Cévennes, it was planted on dry-stone terraces, the faïsses; in the Ardèche, its chestnut groves fell from 60,000 hectares in 1870 to 6,000 in 1960 before being replanted, and the Châtaigne d'Ardèche bears a PDO (AOP). Limousin and Périgord have a Label Rouge; Mourjou has its “castanhaires”, Collobrières the three festival Sundays of the châtaigne du Var, and the marron de Redon once travelled as far as the Thames.
The flour
The bread tree
In Corsica, it was Genoa that planted the mountains: an ordinance of 28 August 1548 required every landowner to plant four fruit trees every year, including the chestnut. The north-eastern massif took the name of Castagniccia from it, and the chestnut, dried then milled, long took the place of wheat there. The farine de châtaigne corse, under a PDO, keeps this custom alive. Poured into boiling salted water, it becomes pulenda, the dense porridge that once replaced bread; mixed with sugar, fruit or brocciu, it turns into cake, the castagnacciu, or fritters, the fritelli castagnine.
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The sugar
From confectioner to toast
At the end of the 19th century, silkworm disease struck the Ardèche. In 1882, in Privas, Clément Faugier opened the département's first factory for marrons glacés: he employed textile workers, skilled in delicate hand movements, and the abundant harvests of the region. Three years later, in 1885, the marrons broken along the way became crème de marrons, crushed with syrup and vanilla. Nothing more was needed for a teatime cake: a jar of crème de marrons, eggs, butter, and the ardéchois comes out of the oven.
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The leaf
Cheeses wrapped in the tree
Cheese does not eat it; it wraps itself in it. In Haute-Provence, matured Banon is entirely covered in brown chestnut leaves, tied with six to twelve strands of raffia, and finishes its maturation beneath them. In Deux-Sèvres, Mothais sur feuille rests upon its own, hence the “sur feuille” of its name; it obtained its AOC on 21 November 2024.
AI-generated illustrations
The flower
Chestnut honey
At the beginning of summer, the chestnut tree covers itself with long, cream-coloured catkins, and bees make from them one of the apiary's darkest honeys: dark brown to reddish in the Landes, powerful and at times tannic. In the Cévennes, it is the most distinctive and sought-after of summer honeys. Corsica has its chestnut grove honey, while Alsace counts the chestnut tree among its crus.
News
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The undergrowth
What the pigs eat
Beneath the chestnut trees, pigs find their final meal of autumn. Coppa de Corse comes from the Nustrale pig, finished on acorns and chestnuts; the porc noir de Bigorre gleans its own on its range, alongside acorns and apples. In Limousin, where pigs were reared in chestnut woods, the chestnut makes its way even into black pudding, crumbled into the blood, softening its pronounced flavour.
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The wood
Smoke and the flour coating
Chestnut wood also burns for charcuterie. Figatellu used to be smoked over the fucone, and is still smoked using only the region's hardwoods — oak, chestnut, beech —, softwood being excluded. In the Ardèche, the tree serves ham twice: its flour enters the coating that covers the lean side during maturation, and its wood fuels the smoking, when one is carried out.
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When the burrs fall
Autumn festivals
Every autumn, the chestnut villages open their squares. People roast them, slit, on a perforated pan until the skin bursts, buy them by the sack, and stock up on flour for the winter. Mourjou has held its fair since 1990 and brings together exhibitors from all chestnut-growing regions.