Chestnut pie

Chestnut pie is a pie in which chestnuts are the main ingredient, used whole, chopped, boiled or roasted, or as a purée, and made as either a savory or a sweet pie. The source places it in French cooking, where it is called tarte à la châtaigne or gâteau ardéchois, in Italian cooking, where it is known as castagnaccio, and in the cooking of the Southern United States. It dates the pie to French cookbooks of the Middle Ages and, in Italy, to the fifteenth century, when Bartolomeo Platina gave a torta of boiled, ground chestnuts with milk and saffron; Bartolomeo Scappi included one in his 1570 Opera. Later examples range from an 1858 sweet pie with chestnuts glazed with orange flowers to a 1908 savory pie of chestnuts, Spanish onion and haricot stock. Savory versions may add mushrooms, leeks or butternut squash, American sweet versions may be cream pies, sometimes with chocolate and whipped cream, and in France the tarte is eaten as a dessert.