Mont Blanc recipe: Paris chestnut dessert, step by step

This Mont Blanc recipe builds the Paris tea-room dessert the way it is meant to work: a dry meringue base, a dome of lightly whipped cream, and chestnut purée pushed through a multi-hole nozzle into threads, which is where the dessert gets both its name and its texture.

The shape was fixed in Paris in the early twentieth century, when the Rue de Rivoli tea rooms inverted the older plated version and served the chestnut on top of a crisp base rather than under whipped cream. The meringue is not decoration; it is the only dry element in a dessert that is otherwise entirely soft, and skipping it leaves you with sweet chestnut soup.

Chestnuts come into the French and Italian markets from October, and the vacuum-packed cooked ones sold year-round work perfectly well here — this is a purée, not a garnish. The method below follows the same autumn logic as our quince tarte Tatin: one fruit, cooked properly, and nothing else competing.

The meringue is not decoration; it is the only dry thing in the dessert.

Ingredients

• 2 egg whites, about 70 g, for the meringue
• 120 g caster sugar, for the meringue
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1 pinch of fine salt
• 300 g cooked peeled chestnuts, vacuum-packed or fresh
• 120 ml whole milk
• 60 g caster sugar, for the chestnut purée
• 1 vanilla pod, split
• 1 tbsp dark rum
• 20 g unsalted butter
• 200 ml double cream, well chilled
• 1 tbsp icing sugar, plus more to finish
• 4 marrons glacés, optional

Method

1. Heat the oven to 110C fan. Whisk the whites with the salt to soft peaks, then add the 120 g of sugar a spoonful at a time until the meringue is stiff and glossy, and fold in the cornflour: the starch stops it weeping as it cools.
2. Pipe or spoon four discs of about 8 cm onto a lined tray and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, then turn the oven off and leave them inside for 30 minutes. Low heat dries the meringue rather than colouring it.
3. Simmer the chestnuts with the milk, the 60 g of sugar and the split vanilla for 10 minutes, until the milk is almost gone and the chestnuts crumble under a spoon.
4. Blend hot with the butter and rum, then push the purée through a fine sieve. Sieving is what lets the threads come out clean instead of breaking.
5. Whip the cream with the tablespoon of icing sugar to soft peaks and stop there. It firms up again as it goes through the piping bag, and over-whipped cream splits on the meringue.
6. Pipe or spoon a dome of cream onto each meringue disc and chill for 15 minutes so it holds its shape under the weight of the purée.
7. Load the chestnut purée into a piping bag with a multi-hole nozzle and cover each dome in threads, turning the plate as you go. Dust with icing sugar and top with a marron glacé.

Make it ahead, and what to drink

The meringues keep for a week in a sealed tin, so bake them the day before; the purée holds two days in the fridge but stiffens and needs a spoonful of milk beaten back in. Only the cream has to be same-day. Swap the rum for whisky for a rounder, sweeter chestnut, or leave the alcohol out and add orange zest to the milk. To drink: a strong black tea, or a small glass of Armagnac.