The chestnut claims a particular place near the heart of the secular Christmas, not least for its association with things fond and familiar. To experience the American yuletide is to stand hip-deep in figurative chestnuts -- Bing Crosby, Jimmy Stewart, "Jingle Bell Rock," to mention a few.

The literal chestnut, the edible member of genus Castanea, makes a nostalgic object and an invitation for thinking outside the culinary box. With due respect to tradition, possibilities lie beyond chestnut stuffing and "chestnuts roasting on an open fire," to quote a chestnut that mentions chestnuts.

When Nat King Cole put Castanea into the holiday songbook with his hit recording of "The Christmas Song" in the winter of 1946-1947, he only echoed Charles Dickens, a font of figurative Christmas chestnuts. The emotional landscape of A Christmas Carol, of course, is established in no small measure by food.

After goose, potatoes and much ado about the pudding, the family of Ebenezer Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit, gathers around for punch, but not before placing "a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire." No further description of these chestnuts appears in that scene, so there's no telling what chestnut variety the Cratchits enjoyed that Christmas Day. Perhaps it was European (Castanea sativa), one of the most common edible varieties today along with Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

When A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, the American chestnut (C. dentata) was probably abundant enough to supply holiday celebrations in the United States and England combined.

Although the American chestnut was never systematically cultivated as a food crop, the trees at that time grew in dense forests from New England to Michigan and south to Mississippi. Growing straight, often to heights of 100 feet, the trees formed the basis for a robust lumber industry, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains.

The first half of the 20th century saw the end of all that as a blight swept through the American chestnut forest like wildfire. The fungus named Endothia parasitica, an Asian import, was already on the move by the time it was discovered on the grounds of the New York Zoological Garden in the Bronx in 1904. By the 1940s, the American chestnut tree and its sweet nuts lived chiefly in memory, like some fond Christmas gone by.

If the holiday evokes yearning, the chestnut by virtue of this sad American history gains another credential as a seasonal symbol. A little searching on the Web finds folks in West Virginia and Kentucky waxing nostalgic about the heyday of the American chestnut, when the nuts in their prickly capsules showered the earth at harvest time.

A minuscule remnant of the immense old American chestnut forest remains, says Fred Hebard, staff pathologist for the American Chestnut Foundation, but the trees die of blight before they can produce seedlings. The trees are nearly gone but hardly forgotten, as researchers try to restore the American chestnut forest.

Hebard says some researchers are working to protect stands of American chestnut by injecting them with substances called hypovirus that attack the fungus. Others are crossbreeding American chestnut trees with blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts, hoping to raise a tree that has mostly American characteristics without the vulnerability to the fungus.

In the eastern United States, most of the chestnut trees being grown for the nuts are Chinese, while western growers tend to raise European or Japanese-European hybrids, says Greg Miller, owner of the Empire Chestnut Co. in eastern Ohio. This year, he quickly sold out of 18,000 pounds of Chinese chestnuts through his mail-order business.

If you're buying chestnuts in a supermarket, Miller says chances are they're imported from Italy, where chestnuts have grown abundantly for centuries.

Often when you start peeling the nuts, you notice a prevalence of mold. Miller says this is because chestnuts are shipped and stored by most processors without refrigeration, despite the fact that chestnuts are closer in water content to fresh fruit and vegetables than they are to other nuts.

The prevalence of mold and stale nuts in a batch is one of a few drawbacks to cooking with fresh roasted rather than bottled chestnuts. There's also the peeling after roasting, which can be painful as it's best done when the nuts are still quite hot. And no matter how hot the nuts, it can be difficult to remove the inner skin, or pellicle, which has all the flavor of office stationery and the texture to match.

The nuts, though, are worth an effort. Dickens may have devoted much ink to Mrs. Cratchit's pudding, but chestnuts can dazzle in an array of flavor combinations.

Consider dishes involving saffron, sage, garlic, dates and caramelized onions. Consider the chestnut a fine complement to poultry, rice and pasta and preparations involving cooked red wine, marsala or madeira.

In other words, consider the chestnut suited to the winter table, evoking a bygone era in American natural history and the atmospherics of Christmas past.

Braised Chestnut and Pearl Onion Confit

Makes 4 to 6 (side dish) servings

10 ounces pearl onions (preferably red)

2 cups roasted, shelled and skinned chestnuts (1 pound in shell or 14 ounces bottled whole)

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter (divided use)

1 cup chicken broth

2 large celery ribs, sliced 1/2 inch thick

2 large shallots, coarsely chopped ( 1/2 cup)

1 sprig fresh thyme

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup dry white wine

Blanch onions in a large saucepan of boiling water 3 minutes, then drain and transfer to a bowl of ice and cold water. Drain onions and peel.

Cook chestnuts in 3 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, 2 minutes. Add broth and celery and cook at a bare simmer, stirring occasionally, until liquid is reduced to about 1/4 cup, about 15 minutes.

While chestnuts are cooking, heat remaining 3 tablespoons butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then saute shallots and peeled onions with thyme and salt and pepper to taste, stirring, until onions are tender and golden-brown in patches. Add wine and simmer until slightly reduced, about 4 minutes.

Gently stir onion mixture into chestnut mixture and season with salt and pepper.

-- Adapted from "Gourmet" magazine