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Beans, Broad or Windsor, Mashed
This is the only way in which old beans may be cooked to advantage. They should be first boiled in the ordinary way fully half an hour, by which time the skins will have burst, and they may be easily removed. Mash them with the back of a wooden spoon until quite smooth, then put them back into the stewpan with a little sugar, butter, pepper, and salt. Warm up, and then press them into a buttered mould. The mould should be hot and kept hot until ready to serve; then turn out. Probable cost, 6d. per peck. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A purée of mature broad beans, moulded and turned out. The recipe is built around old, starchy beans whose skins have gone leathery — the long boil is deliberate, not careless.
- Broad or Windsor beans are fava beansWindsor was the standard large-seeded English variety; the pods and beans are what a modern shop sells as fava. Frozen shelled favas work, though they are usually young and will not need the full half hour.
- Old beans are the pointYoung broad beans mashed this way turn watery and bland. Use beans that are large, dull-skinned and mealy — the sort that are unpleasant served whole.
- SkinningAfter boiling, the split skins slip off between finger and thumb. Do this while the beans are hot; they cling once cool. Skinning is what separates a smooth purée from a gritty one.
- A peckA dry measure of two gallons, i.e. 8 quarts (about 9 litres) -- perhaps 8 to 9 lb of beans still in the pod, which would shell down to something under 3 lb. That is broadly consistent with six or seven servings.
- Sugar and butterNo quantities are given. A teaspoon of sugar and 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter per pound of shelled beans is in keeping; the sugar is there to lift the flavour of tired beans, not to sweeten them.
- The hot mouldA cold mould chills the outside of the purée and it collapses or sticks on turning out. Warm the buttered mould with boiling water, dry it, pack the purée in firmly to avoid air pockets, and hold it in a low oven or a pan of hot water until service.
- ConsistencyA wooden spoon gives a coarse, rustic mash. A food mill or ricer is closer to the intended smoothness; a food processor will make it gluey.
- ServingThis was a vegetable course or an accompaniment to boiled bacon, ham or mutton. Chopped savory or parsley is the traditional English seasoning with broad beans.
Broad beans are the oldest cultivated bean in Europe, grown in Britain long before the arrival of American haricots and runner beans, and for centuries they were as much a staple of the field as of the garden. Windsor was a leading large-seeded variety of the nineteenth-century kitchen garden. Because the crop matures fast and the whole planting comes in at once, cooks could be left with beans past their best -- tough-skinned and floury -- and mashing them to a purée was one remedy for them, comparable to the logic behind pease pudding from dried peas. The costing at sixpence a peck makes this a cheap dish, and the shaping in a mould is a small piece of dining-room formality applied to what is essentially a thrift dish.