That old chestnut

Made into flour, roasted with ceps or turned into a cheesecake, there is much to love about the versatile sweet chestnut

- John Wright

But we give that fruit to our swine in England, which is amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries”.

So said the 17th-century diarist John Evelyn of the sweet chestnut. With but a few additions to our sweet chestnut kitchen repertoire, little has changed in the past few centuries, with stuffing and “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” being all that comes to our collective mind.

Perhaps this is down to our nuts ripening small and infrequently; we could never rely on them and thus have no tradition of using them. I have strolled in the chestnut coppices of northern Italy where large nuts lay ankle deep — something seldom encountered in our cooler climes. In Britain, even if they are ankle deep, most of the husks (cupules) will be empty or contain nuts that are conspicuously underfed.

The sweet chestnut tree, Castanea sativa, is one of our largest, with some venerable, sprawling standards that are metres across at the trunk and centuries old. Despite its Mediterranean origin, you might think that such a clearly successful tree would be entirely content in Britain. But here it is at the north of its range and its disappointing fruiting habits reflect this, as does the frost susceptibility of its young leaves.

It grows throughout lowland Britain, becoming less common in the north, usually growing on well-drained, acid soils.

Folk tales