Chestnut Cream

A friend from France, when we talked shortly after Thanksgiving, remarked at how good turkey was with chestnut cream. As everybody knows, turkey is supposed to be eaten with cranberry sauce. Indeed, I had never heard of chestnut cream.

Since he visited me recently, it came up again. There's a chestnut cream cake that he thought he might make. At my usual supermarket, each of four employees I asked looked at me like I was from outer space and directed me to talk to someone else or look at some other shelf, just in case. A supermarket, these days, has a lot of bottles and cans and jars, and I looked at most of them before concluding it just wasn't there.

I checked another market, with a slightly more specialized bent. I asked the guy stocking shelves whether they had chestnut cream. After a puzzled look, he led me right to it. They have chestnut cream, imported from France, and they want $7.50 for a four-ounce can. Exactly how badly did we need chestnut cream, anyway?

My friend, who agreed that that price was rather high, brought some chestnut cream with him when he came. We didn't make a cake, but I tasted it, and it's sweetened to the point where it tastes very similar to honey. In fact, I tried it on peanut butter, and it's pretty good. I doubt that's a conventional use for it, since peanut butter is a rarity in France and chestnut cream is apparently a rarity outside France. I also had it this morning on toast over yogurt cheese. I'm still not certain how chestnut cream ought to be used, but I do like it, and I'm putting it anyplace I would ordinarily spread honey.