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Dry Lima Beans
Wash one quart of dry lima beans in two warm waters, soak three hours, drain, and put on to cook in enough boiling water to cover them; cover pot with tin lid, adding more hot water as it boils away, boiling rapidly for one and a half hours, when there should be only water enough to come up to top of the beans-just sufficient to make a nice dressing. Five minutes before taking up, season with salt and pepper, and stir in a dressing made of one tablespoon each of flour and butter, rubbed together until smooth. This is a delicious dish.
A plain boiled-bean side dish from a book that assumed dried beans were a weekly staple. The technique holds up, with a few adjustments to soak time and heat.
- Quantity and yieldOne quart of dry lima beans is roughly 1 3/4 lb, which cooks up to serve eight to ten as a side. Halve it for a family meal.
- Soak longerThree hours is short for large limas by modern standards; most will still be firm at the centre. Soak overnight, or at least 6-8 hours, and cook until the beans crush easily against the side of the pot.
- Cooking time varies with the beansAn hour and a half suits reasonably fresh dried beans. Beans that have sat in a cupboard for two years may take twice that, and very old beans may never soften. Judge by texture, not the clock.
- Don't boil rapidlyA hard boil tears the skins off limas and breaks them into mush. Bring to a boil, then hold at a bare simmer with the lid ajar, topping up with hot water as the original directs.
- Salt at the end, as writtenThe instruction to season five minutes before serving is worth keeping: by that point the liquid has cooked down, so you can judge the seasoning against what will actually be on the plate before the dressing goes in.
- The beurre maniéThe beurre manié -- The "dressing" of one tablespoon each of flour and butter rubbed smooth is a beurre manié: raw flour and butter kneaded together. Drop it in in small pieces and stir; give it a full three or four minutes of simmering so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Liquid levelAim for the liquid sitting level with the top of the beans before you add the dressing. If there is more, ladle some out rather than boiling it down hard.
- The tin lidA "tin lid" simply meant a light tinned-metal cover rather than a heavy iron one. Any pan lid does the same job.
Lima beans reached North American kitchens from South America by way of the Caribbean trade, and nineteenth-century American cookbooks treat both the fresh green shell bean and the large dried white one as everyday food. Buckeye Cookery was compiled from contributions by Midwestern housewives, and its vegetable chapter reflects a pantry organised around what keeps: dried beans, peas and corn carried a household from one garden season to the next. The finishing "dressing" of flour rubbed into butter is a thickening method long familiar in English cookery, and is known by the French term beurre manié. The closing line, "This is a delicious dish," is in keeping with the book's contributed recipes, a number of which end with a personal verdict rather than a serving note.