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Boiled White Beans
Pick over and wash two cups white beans; cover with two quarts cold water and let soak overnight; drain and place them in a stew-pan, cover with two quarts cold water, add one small carrot cut in quarters, one medium-sized onion cut in half, two sprays parsley and onequarter pound of lean salt pork, one-half tablespoon salt; cover and cook slowly until beans are tender (about two hours). Remove vegetables, drain beans. Chop the pork and mix with beans.
A plain pot of beans built on a mirepoix and salt pork, meant as a side dish rather than a soup. Nothing here is dated beyond the vessel names and the salt handling.
- Stew-panAny heavy 4-quart pot with a lid. Enameled cast iron or a Dutch oven holds a slow simmer better than thin stainless.
- Which beans"White beans" in an American book of this period usually points to small navy or pea beans. Cannellini or Great Northern work but cook faster and break up more readily.
- Salt timingThe half tablespoon of salt plus a quarter pound of salt pork is a lot going in at the start. Add the salt at the end instead, taste first, and consider rinsing or blanching the pork if it is very heavily cured.
- Cooking timeTwo hours is right for older dried beans at a bare simmer, but fresh-crop beans can be tender in 45 to 60 minutes. Start checking at 45 minutes; a bean should crush against the roof of your mouth.
- Keep it lowThe one instruction that matters is "cook slowly." A rolling boil bursts the skins and turns the pot to mush; you want the water barely trembling.
- Don't discard the liquidThe recipe drains the beans, which throws away a good deal of flavor. Drain them lightly and leave a few spoonfuls of the starchy liquid clinging, or reserve the broth for soup.
- The porkModern salt pork is fattier than the "lean salt pork" specified. Slab bacon or pancetta gives a closer result; crisp the chopped pieces in a skillet before folding them in if you want texture.
- YieldTwo cups of dried beans gives about five to six cups cooked, enough for six as a side.
52 Sunday Dinners belongs to a wave of early twentieth-century American cookbooks organized as complete menus, one for each week of the year, aimed at the housekeeper planning rather than improvising. Dried legumes kept indefinitely in the pantry and cost almost nothing, and salt pork was a standard fat and flavoring of the northern American kitchen. The technique of simmering beans with a carrot, an onion halved, and a sprig or two of parsley, then lifting the vegetables out before serving, echoes French domestic practice. What distinguishes this version from Boston baked beans, the dish period American cooks most often associated with white beans, is the absence of molasses and the oven; this one is boiled on the stovetop and served as a vegetable alongside the meat.