Chocolate Chestnut Loaf

Mélanie made for us a classic chocolate and chestnut loaf with the chestnuts we had gathered at La Grande Jeanne in Annecy on a Sunday afternoon excursion. I have often made this chocolate loaf and served it with what in Savoie would be called a sambayon, or zabaglione. In researching which wine could be used in the Savoie to make the sabayon, I realized that Jean Nicolas, in his text on food in the eighteenth century, mentions that just about