Chestnust And Tarts

Old Chestnuts

My last posting provoked an interesting email from my cousin Sarah who lives in the foot of Italy. She pointed out that there is a chestnut festival each year in a village near where she lives (Matera) in which the locals make bread and cakes from chestnut flour and have a general knees-up to go with them, including dancing to bagpipes. She also included an explanation of the difference between “chataigne” and “marron” from her French son-in-law, which was that one denotes two nuts in the casing and one denotes one nut.

There are a couple of points there that I want to comment on but first I want to return to my original point: “chataignes”versus “marrons”. We have two different varieties of tree with two different varieties of fruit so clearly need words to distinguish between them. The only words are “chataigne” and “marron” so these must be the words; what I really wanted to know was which was which but I couldn't, until that pizza evening, get a believable answer. I, too, had been given the one nut versus two story but it doesn't stand up. Firstly, I see no particular reason to distinguish between one nut and two in a casing (other than saying simply one nut or two) and if there were a compelling reason then there should be a word for three nuts, which there isn't. Anyway, my Quillet-Flammarion dictionary confirmed the distinction I had been given: “chataignes” are sweet chestnuts and “marrons” are horse chestnuts. It seems obvious to me that most French people use the words almost interchangeably and either don't know or want to make the distinction.

My cousin's point about her local village festival missed my point partly. My point about the Ardeche was not that they traditionally make cakes and bread from chestnut flour but that chestnuts more than a century ago were an important part of their staple diet throughout the year; the Ardechois used it as their staple filler, rather than wheat, rice, potatoes or whatever.. On reflection, my assertion of the Ardeche's uniqueness in this respect (even if just to my knowledge) was definitely rash. There are quite probably other enclaves in the world which, before transport changed the situation, had chestnuts as the staple filler in their diet.

In the area where I live, a particular variety of wheat called “epautre” was generally used to make bread until improved transport brought flour which made much better bread and so supplanted “epautre”. “Epautre” is now grown only as a health food speciality, of uncertain superior properties except that it is glutin-free, but it sells at far superior prices to the usual wheats for bread.. That's life.

The final point was the bagpipes in southern Italy. I have always associated bagpipes with the Celtic culture and was not aware of any great Celtic influence in the foot of Italy. Coincidentally, I was idly watching a TV programme that had a feature on bagpipes. It turns out that the Celtic connection is a popular misconception. Bagpipes are thought to have originated a couple of millennia ago, somewhere in the Middle East. The Scots, for instance, didn't get them until around the 13^th century. Bagpipes seem to have spread through numerous cultures and are now pretty well endemic throughout the world. For my part, the world is welcome to them.

Tarts

Friends Daniel, his son Kevyn and Marie came to lunch today and, for dessert, I served an apple pie I had made. I called it a “tarte aux pommes” as I had come to believe that the French for a sweet tart was a “tarte” and the word for a savoury tart, or pie, was “tourte”. Marie corrected me. The distinction is not between sweet and savoury but the position of the pastry. A “tarte” has pastry underneath and a “tourte” pastry on top. So, another distinction clarified.

Footnote

I've left the accents off French words in this posting. I put them on on in the last and they caused the point-size of the text to break up, as has happened before. \i've no idea why this happens and can't be bothered to try to find out and correct it. The easy way is to exclude accents.