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Boiled Beans
Put the dry beans in cold soft water, and let them soak three or four hours. Then put them in cold water-two quarts of water to one quart of beans, adding a tablespoonful of salt-bring them to a boil, and let them simmer until tender, say two, or two and a half hours. Pour the water away from them; let them stand by the side of the fire, with the lid of the saucepan partially off, to allow the beans to dry, then add an ounce of butter for every quart of beans, and seasoning of pepper and salt.
A plain boiled dried bean, finished with butter rather than sauce. The instructions still work; only a few details reflect an older kitchen.
- Soft waterHard water slows the softening of bean skins, which is why the original specifies soft water. If your tap water is very hard, use filtered or bottled water, or add a pinch of baking soda to the soaking water.
- Soaking timeThree or four hours may have been enough for beans dried more recently than most supermarket stock. Beans of unknown age do better with a full overnight soak, or a quick soak: bring to a boil, take off the heat and leave an hour before cooking.
- Salt in the waterThe tablespoon of salt in the cooking water is sound practice, whatever you may have heard about salt toughening beans. It seasons them from the inside; test for tenderness rather than trusting the clock.
- Cooking timeTwo to two and a half hours assumes a slow fire and only a short soak. Soaked haricots or navy beans at a gentle simmer are usually done in 60 to 90 minutes; older beans can take considerably longer and some never soften at all.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil splits skins and turns the pot cloudy. Keep the surface barely trembling and the beans hold their shape.
- Drying by the fire"By the side of the fire" means low residual heat. On a modern hob, return the drained beans to the dry pan over the lowest setting for two or three minutes with the lid ajar, shaking once, until the surface moisture steams off.
- An ounce of butterOne ounce is two tablespoons per quart of beans; the recipe does not make clear whether that quart is measured dry or cooked, and earlier it measures them dry. Add it off the heat so it coats rather than fries.
- YieldA quart of dry beans swells to roughly two and a half quarts cooked, which will serve a large number as a side dish.
Boiled dried beans were a fixture of the American and British household kitchen long before canning made them a convenience. The insistence on soft water is a practical inheritance from the era of well and cistern supplies, when cooks knew from experience that some water simply would not cook a bean tender; the chemistry, calcium and magnesium ions cross-linking the pectin in the skins, was worked out much later. The technique of draining and drying the beans over low heat before buttering is the same logic applied to boiled potatoes.