Marron glacé is a chestnut candied whole in sugar syrup and finished with a thin, glassy glaze — the most prestigious of European confections. Made from large, single-kernel varieties of sweet chestnut, each nut is peeled, gently poached and then steeped in a syrup strengthened in stages over many days until sugar saturates the flesh, giving a tender, faintly grainy interior of intense, honeyed chestnut sweetness beneath a lacquer-like shell. A costly holiday luxury from the chestnut belts of France and northern Italy, it is eaten on its own, folded into desserts, and — from the pieces and syrup left over — reworked into chestnut cream (crème de marrons).