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BEANS, BROAD OR WINDSOR (a la Poulette)
Boil one quart of young broad beans over a quick fire until nearly done; then put them into a stewpan with sweet herbs very finely cut, a little sugar, half a pint of stock; pepper and salt at discretion. Before beginning to stew see that the beans are well drained from the water in which they were boiled. Stew until half the liquor is absorbed, and just as they are on the point of simmering beat up the yolk of an egg with a quarter of a pint of cream, and add it to them. Time, ten minutes to boil; fifteen to stew. Probable cost, from 6d. to 8d. per peck. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian treatment of fava beans finished with the classic egg-and-cream liaison. Nearly everything here works as written; the two things to watch are the timing and the moment the egg goes in.
- Never let it boil after the eggThe liaison of yolk and cream is added "just as they are on the point of simmering," and that is the hinge of the dish. Pull the pan off the heat, stir the egg and cream in, then return it to the lowest heat only until it thickens; a true simmer will scramble the yolk and break the sauce.
- Broad or Windsor beansThese are fava beans. The quart is most likely a quart of shelled beans, very roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb, which would be something like 3 lb in the pod. Frozen shelled favas work well and need no pre-boiling beyond a couple of minutes.
- Rethink the timingsTen minutes' boiling plus fifteen minutes' stewing will reduce genuinely young beans to mush. Blanch small tender beans 3 to 5 minutes, then stew 8 to 10 minutes until the stock has reduced by half.
- SkinsThe book assumes beans young enough to eat whole. Anything larger than a thumbnail has a tough grey-green skin; blanch, cool and slip the skins off before stewing, or the finished dish will be leathery.
- Imperial liquid measuresHalf a pint of stock is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups; a quarter pint of cream is 5 fl oz, about 2/3 cup. Use single or heavy cream, not half-and-half, which is likelier to split.
- Sweet herbsIn Victorian usage this generally means the soft kitchen herbs: parsley, thyme, marjoram, savory and the like. Summer savory is the traditional partner to broad beans; add delicate herbs at the end so they keep their colour.
- "Per peck" is not a serving measureThe cost note refers to the market price of unshelled beans by the peck, not to the quantity used. The recipe itself serves five or six as a vegetable course.
- Sugar"A little sugar" is unquantified; half a teaspoon is plenty, to lift the beans rather than sweeten them. Very fresh favas rarely need any.
A la poulette describes a dish finished with a sauce bound by egg yolk and cream, sharpened in French practice with lemon juice; the name is usually connected with poulette, the diminutive of poule, a hen, though whether it points to the eggs or to an original dish of chicken is not settled. It was a standard nineteenth-century finish for veal, tripe, mussels and tender vegetables, and its appearance here shows how thoroughly English household cookery of the 1870s and 80s had absorbed French sauce vocabulary. Broad beans, also called Windsor beans in Britain after a widely grown large-seeded strain, were among the oldest cultivated vegetables in the country and cheap enough in season for Cassell's to quote them by the peck. A quart of young beans dressed in cream and egg was the sort of dish that turned a garden glut into something fit for a middle-class dinner table.