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Corsica
Fried chestnut flour fritters, dusted with sugar: a Corsican delicacy, traditionally served at village festivals and carnival.
Pastry or bakery speciality from Corsica.
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To understand these fritters, one must go back to the tree. In Corsica, chestnuts milled into flour regularly made up for shortfalls in cereal production and, in times of scarcity, provided the staple diet of the rural population: ‘As long as we have chestnuts, we shall have bread’, wrote Pascal Paoli in 1758. Until the early years of the 20th century, this flour was eaten every day, as porridge, pancakes or bread.
Other preparations blended it with brocciu, fresh cheese, sugar, dried or candied fruit, serving as a treat or dessert. The INAO page on farine de châtaigne corse cites several: tarts, cakes — castagnacciu, franduline, panette… — and fritters, which it calls ‘fritelle pisticcine or castagnine’. It does not say how they were prepared.
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Before being milled, chestnuts were dried. The quantities to be stored required the fucone, a hearth with schist walls built directly on the floor in the middle of a large room, and the rataghju, a drying rack of spaced chestnut slats where the fruit was stored.
The only dated account reported by Wikipedia is an 1880 narrative from the journal Scribner's Monthly: there, chestnuts were gathered from the ground — beating the trees was discouraged —, then slowly dried over green-wood fires until hard and dry. Dried in this way, they kept for years before being ground into flour ‘like maize or wheat’, from which fritelli were made, among other dishes: pulenta, necci, castagnacciu…
The word ‘fritelle’ does not refer to a single fritter. Wikipedia defines it as a Corsican wheat-flour or chestnut-flour fritter, this latter version bearing the name fritelle castagnine, and cites variants with fresh cheese or brocciu (fritelli di casgiu frescu) and with sausage (fritelli di salciccia). The Corsican press still features them: in January 2026, Corse Net Infos offered fritelle di brocciu for its Sunday table, ‘a simple, seasonal dish, present on all Corsican tables when brocciu is here’. An online guide classifies fritelle castagnine, which it also calls frappe, among traditional desserts.
Appearance
the batter, dropped by the spoonful into hot oil, is fried until golden on one side then the other; an online guide notes that they are then dusted with sugar.
Taste
the farine de châtaigne corse from which they are made is characterised, the INAO notes, by its sweet flavour, biscuit-like taste and melt-in-the-mouth texture.
fried chestnut flour fritters dusted with sugar, traditionally served at village festivals and carnival, according to an online guide.
batter made with farine de châtaigne corse PDO, egg, water and salt, served with brocciu PDO or thin slices of figatellu.
made with wheat flour, fresh cheese or brocciu, or sausage; the brocciu version from Corse Net Infos is also eaten sweet, with sugar and lemon zest.
the egg is beaten in a bowl.
heat the oil in a frying pan, drop in the batter by the tablespoon, brown on one side then the other.
remove, drain and blot on kitchen paper before serving.
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The PDO syndicate recommends pairing these fritters with brocciu PDO or thin slices of figatellu. An online guide notes that they are dusted with sugar.
Fritelli castagnine are not themselves protected. The farine de châtaigne corse with which they are prepared is: an appellation d'origine contrôlée by decree of 24 November 2006, then a European PDO (AOP) since 2010.
No producer is listed for this product yet.