Ingredients
- cooked and peeled chestnuts
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 tablespoon to 2 cognac
- granulated sugar
Instructions
- Soak chestnuts in water and lemon juice overnight.
- The next day, preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
- Drop chestnuts into boiling water or milk. Simmer until tender but firm.
- Drain chestnusts and discard water or milk.
- For every cup of nuts, make a syrup by cooking the water, sugar and cream of tartar to a temperature of 238 degrees F.
- Drop nuts into boiling syrup and simmer for about 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 24 hours.
- Drain nuts, reserving syrup.
- While preparing sauce, put nuts in the oven to dry.
- Reduce the syrup until it is very thick.
- Place nuts in jars. Add cognac to each jar.
- Fill jars with syrup and seal.
- To candy the nuts they must be dried not once, but three times, dipping them between dryings in the reduced syrup.
- After final drying roll them in sugar. Store in tightly covered tins.