Chapter 22: Chestnut Cream
AUTUMN marched on, winter drawing nearer. Every year, Olivia would think of how winter was approaching when she would get up at dawn and find her breath misting white in front of her while she was in the kitchen.
While she was halfway down the stairs, she heard Rob pattering over.
Wanted see you! Wanted see you!
It was his morning greeting. Every morning, he bounced around with excitement, as if it was their first time seeing each other in years.
Came. Food came, thought Dale, who was always waiting for food every morning. Olivia thought he would come upstairs to join her and Arthur in their bed when it started to get cold, but he just stayed curled up next to Rob.
Olivia filled a pot with plenty of water and set it on the stove. She fed the horses, Annie and Greta, and the goats, Pete and Pepe, while she waited for the water to boil. She changed out their water, too, then fed Rob and Dale next.
Rob nearly inhaled his breakfast, while Dale ate more slowly, though making chomping noises as he did. Olivia sipped a cup of tea while she watched Rob curl up in his bed once he finished and Dale carefully cleaned his face.
“Good morning, Olivia.”
“Good morning, Lara. You could have a lie in, if you want to. A girl your age could really do with more sleep, don’t you think?”
The two of them tackled preparing breakfast together while they talked. Today’s soup was going to be a salty pork rib, spring onion, and carrot soup. Olivia’s secret ingredient for this was garlic, and she tossed in some barley, too. The soup thickened as the barley boiled until it was soft. It was the kind of soup your body was grateful for after it was forced to huddle against the winter cold.
Arthur came down around the time breakfast was ready. Rob once again shouted, Wanted see you! Wanted see you! while wagging his tail so hard it seemed about to fly off.
Dale just glanced at Arthur from the bed. Mate come. Slow.
That gave Olivia the impression Dale didn’t dislike Arthur.
“I’m off work today,” he said. “I was thinking I’d chop some wood. Couldn’t hurt to have a bit more, right?”
“Right. You can never have too much firewood. Thank you for taking care of it.”
The three of them checked in with each other about their plans for the day while they ate their breakfast of soup. Arthur was going to chop wood. Lara was going to work on grinding dried medicinal herbs into powder in addition to her apothecary studies. Olivia hadn’t decided what she would do yet.
“What’re you thinking of doing?” asked Arthur.
“Hm. I kind of want to make some chestnut cream today,” she replied.
“I’ve never had chestnut cream, but it sounds delicious!” said Lara. “How do you turn those hard, dried chestnuts into a cream?” Her eyes were sparkling. She’d fallen in love with anything that had “chestnut” in the name ever since she had that first dried chestnut.
“Well, I’ve already nearly gone through all the dried chestnuts for cooking, right?” said Olivia. “So, I’ll take what’s left, soften them up, then add milk, cream, and sugar to make chestnut cream. It’s heaven to eat it spread on bread. I was overwhelmed the first time I ate it, which was after I moved here.”
“I’ll do my work near you so I can watch you make it!”
“Maybe I’ll make you my first taste tester, Lara.”
“Oooh, yay!”
Arthur couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore because Lara’s grin was so wide it’d have to grow past her face to get any bigger. He pointed out her silly smile, but she didn’t stop grinning.
Lara had mentioned at some point that, to her family, sweets were a luxury you only got once a year. Sugar was obviously a luxury, but apparently, she never even got to eat fruit.
She really was treated like an indentured servant, thought Olivia, and that made her feel sorry for the girl, but Lara did have fond memories of her mother. She had things to help her through that time.
They ate the barley and pork rib soup with bread, then each went to start their jobs for the day.
Olivia put a handful of sugar into a pot of lukewarm water, then added the dried chestnuts and let it all soak with a lid directly on the chestnuts.
“Keep the heat as low as you can until the chestnuts get soft again,” said Olivia to Lara, then she went upstairs to get changed. She imagined it was going to snow soon, so she needed to put the cut, dry hay into the goat barn.
“This will be a good workout,” she said.
Once she was in clothes she didn’t mind getting covered in hay, she went outside, grabbed armloads from the pile in the front yard, and quickly made trips to the goat barn. Arthur was in the yard splitting wood with a satisfying, thunk! thunk! If he didn’t get the wood chopped and stored on the firewood rack under the eaves, it would get damp and that would cause Olivia trouble later on, which was why he was working so hard. Everyone was busy with preparations for winter at the end of autumn.
While they worked, Max from the bakery came to deliver freshly baked bread. Max was in his fifties, and his son had taken over the baking part of the business, so Max focused solely on delivery now. He was also one of Olivia’s regulars and a lover of soup.
He brought in large, long loaves of bread along with the boxes they came in, then Olivia served him a cup of mint tea even though it was outside normal opening hours, letting him slowly savor his soup until the restaurant opened properly.
“I’m going to make some chestnut cream today,” Olivia told him.
“Oh? When’ll it be done? I’ll have to come back if you’re going to manage to get it done by tomorrow.”
“It should be ready tomorrow.”
“You wouldn’t sell me just the cream, would you?”
“I’m sorry that I have to say no to that every year. I can’t make enough to supply your bakery, Max.”
“We’ve tried making it a few times ourselves, but it never tastes or smells like yours.”
“Haha, hmm.”
“What’s your secret?”
“There’s no secret.”
“Hmm, not sure that’s the whole truth.”
Olivia smirked, and Max declared, “I’ll be back tomorrow!” as he left, as if that was his way of reserving his share of the chestnut cream.
“Olivia, do you really not have a secret trick for making your chestnut cream?” asked Lara.
“Hmm, if there is a trick, it just comes down to using the less sweet chestnuts for cooking, and saving the sweeter, stronger-flavored chestnuts for the cream.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep. That’s it.”
It was the squirrels that taught Olivia how to pick out the tastier chestnuts.
The squirrels remembered that Olivia would give them some of the chestnuts once she’d removed them from their burrs, which was why they’d sit stock-still in the trees watching Olivia gather them. Then, when she scattered some across the ground, they’d swarm the chestnuts and fight to be the first one to them.
“You don’t have to steal them from each other! There’s plenty for everyone,” she’d tell them.
Olivia loved watching them skillfully peel the skin and spit it out before devouring the raw chestnuts inside. She watched them year after year, until she realized there were some chestnuts they warred over and others they didn’t.
Her grandmother had told her to look for the ones that were big, round, and glossy, so she already knew that much. But she also noticed the darker-colored chestnuts were popular among the squirrels. She sampled the difference, and realized how dark or light the color was had a connection to how strong or not the flavor was.
There was one other important factor, too: the tree.
The same trees produced the best chestnuts every year, though she wasn’t sure if it was due to better nutrition, better sunlight, or something else entirely.
Olivia memorized where the best trees were and put the chestnuts from those ones aside for her chestnut cream.
Any chestnut could be used for cooking, since you had to add seasoning anyway, but the flavor of the ingredients was the deciding factor for the final product when it came to chestnut cream. So, the only real “trick” was to remember which trees produced the best chestnuts.
The chestnuts were deshelled before drying, then rehydrated and smashed with the skins still on and worked into cream, milk, and sugar. Once nice and thick, it was sieved one final time, then it was done.
Olivia gave Lara the first taste, and, when she did, Lara clapped her hands to her cheeks and bounced in her chair. “Oh my gosh! How in the world could anything be so yummy!” she cried.
“If you like it that much, tonight you can go ahead and toast some bread nice and crispy, put a thin swipe of butter on, then load it up with as much chestnut cream as you like.”
“But this is for the customers! Are you sure?” Lara was very cute. Hesitant to accept on the one hand, wiping the drool from the corner of her mouth on the other.
“I’m sure,” said Olivia. “If it makes you that happy, I’m happy to let you eat all the chestnut cream this year.”
“N-No, I can’t do that. It’s for the restaurant. It wouldn’t be right. But, just tonight, maybe I could have three slices of toast with chestnut cream?”
“Go right ahead. Have four. Have five!”
That evening, the kitchen was filled with Lara’s squeals of, “It’s soooo good!” every time she took a bite of the freshly made chestnut cream. Arthur chuckled but didn’t say anything. Rob seemed to get used to it right away, but Dale replied to each of Lara’s squeals with a thought of, Loud, until she was done.
The next day, customers saw the sign that said there was chestnut cream, and they all ordered it. It was priced at one large copper coin per spoonful, which was one of the large soup spoons heaped full, so the customers kept coming with orders of, “Two spoons for me,” or “Can I get three spoons on bread?”
Word spread quickly every year that Soup Forest had started selling its chestnut cream. The huge pot Olivia had made sold out in only three days.
“Oh, it’s already all gone,” said Lara.
“I’ll make more next year. And if you help, I can double the amount,” said Olivia.
“I’ll definitely help then!”
I wonder if she’ll be here next year, wondered Olivia. She’ll likely leave if she passes the apothecary exam. It’ll be lonely without her.
As that thought crossed her mind while washing the dishes, Arthur came from behind and gave her a gentle hug. “I’ll be here,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Mates close, murmured Dale, making Olivia turn around to see him lying between Rob’s forelegs, only his eyes moving as he looked at them.