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Beans, French, Boiled
Only the ends and stalks require to be taken off when the beans are very young, and no mode of cooking can make very old ones eatable. Put them as they are prepared into cold water. They are cut according to taste lengthwise into thin strips or obliquely into a lozenge form. The strings should be drawn off with the tops and stalks when they are come to their proper growth. Put them into a large saucepan of boiling water, slightly salted, allow the steam to escape, and keep boiling very fast until tender. Time, fifteen minutes if young; twenty to twenty-five minutes if old. Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per pound.
A straightforward set of instructions for green beans, with one detail that modern cooks should ignore outright: the boiling time.
- The timing is the hingeFifteen to twenty-five minutes will reduce today's beans to olive-drab mush. Modern varieties, picked young and shipped fast, need 3-5 minutes in fast-boiling water; taste one at three minutes and go from there.
- Why the old times were so longBeans picked past their prime have stringy seams and tougher pods, and the longer end of the range here is aimed at those: the recipe gives fifteen minutes for young beans and twenty to twenty-five for old, and warns that no cooking can rescue very old ones.
- "French" means the cut, not the originThe cuts -- Cutting lengthwise into thin strips is what a modern cook calls French-cut; the oblique lozenge cut is the same idea on the diagonal. Whole beans are fine and hold their shape better at short cooking times.
- StringingAlmost all supermarket green beans are stringless. Snap off the stem end only; the tapered tip needs nothing. The instruction to draw the strings off with the tops applies to older heirloom and runner-bean types.
- Keep the pan uncovered"Allow the steam to escape" is sound and worth keeping. A lid traps volatile acids that turn the beans a dull khaki. Boil hard, uncovered, in plenty of water so the temperature does not drop when the beans go in.
- Cold water before, cold water afterThe holding water keeps prepared beans crisp. The book stops at tender; if you are serving them cold or reheating in butter, drain and plunge into iced water to fix the colour and stop the cooking.
- Salt and quantity"Slightly salted" is under-seasoned by current standards; use about a tablespoon of salt per 4 litres of water. Reckon 4-6 oz of beans per person, so a pound serves three or four as a side.
- The cost note2d. to 4d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency and appears throughout Cassell's as a guide for household budgeting. It has no useful modern equivalent.
French beans in Victorian British usage meant the immature edible pod of the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, as distinct from broad beans, which were shelled and much older in English kitchens. The name is generally traced to the plant's arrival in England by way of continental Europe, and to the French habit of eating the whole young pod rather than waiting for the seeds. The insistence on youth runs through much writing of the period, since beans came from the kitchen garden or a local market and could easily be a week past their best; the modern cook's problem is the opposite, and the timings here are the clearest evidence of it.