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Beans, French or Kidney
Choose fine young beans, and be careful that they are the right sort. The best kind are the case-knife, because they have no strings, and are consequently all eatable, and need only be broken in two, not cut. Should these not be obtainable, take the youngest that can be procured: remove the thread or string that runs along the back of the pod, then cut them in a slanting direction lengthways in very thin slices, throw them into boiling water well salted, and to preserve their colour boil without the lid of the saucepan. When tender, drain in a colander, add a small piece of butter and a dash of pepper, and give the whole a shake. Some cooks add a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, but we do not think this an improvement. This dish may be varied in a great many ways, and with great success. Cold French beans with oil and vinegar make an excellent and refreshing salad. They may also, when cooked and drained, be mixed with some good brown gravy, and served alone as a course after the meat.
A late-Victorian method for green beans that still holds up, with one instruction worth taking seriously and one timing that needs shortening.
- Boil uncovered — this is the hingeLeaving the lid off lets the volatile acids released by the beans escape rather than condensing back into the pot, where they dull the chlorophyll to olive. Modern practice adds a second step: drain and plunge into iced water to stop the cooking, then reheat in the butter.
- What a case-knife bean isAn old flat-podded pole bean, named for its resemblance to a table-knife blade, and prized because the pods could be eaten young without stringing. It is scarce commercially, though heirloom seed catalogues still list a 'Case Knife' bean; a good flat romano bean is the nearest thing on sale, and ordinary supermarket green beans have been bred stringless for decades, so the threading step is usually unnecessary.
- "Cut in a slanting direction lengthways"This is French-cutting: laying the pod flat and slicing it lengthways on a bias into thin ribbons. It was done to make older, coarser beans palatable. Young beans do not need it and are better snapped in two, as the recipe itself prefers.
- Cook timeNo time is given, and Victorian "tender" ran long. Thin French-cut beans need 2-3 minutes in fast-boiling water, whole young beans 4-6. Test by biting one; they should give but still snap.
- Salt the water properly'Well salted' is usually taken to mean something like a tablespoon of salt per 4 quarts of water, though practice varies. Beans absorb relatively little of it, and under-salted blanching water is one common reason boiled beans taste of nothing.
- The butter finishA "small piece" is about 1 tablespoon for a pound of beans. Add it to the hot drained beans off the heat and shake the pan so it emulsifies with the clinging water rather than pooling.
- The salad and gravy variantsFor the salad, dress the beans while still warm — they take up oil and vinegar far better than cold. The brown gravy version reflects the Victorian habit of serving a vegetable as its own course after the meat, and wants a well-reduced meat gravy, not a thin pan juice.
- YieldReckon 4 oz of trimmed beans per person as a side dish, rather more if they are being served alone as a course.
The French bean is Phaseolus vulgaris, a New World plant that reached Europe in the sixteenth century; its English name is generally explained by the route it travelled rather than any origin, the plant having come to English gardens by way of France and the Low Countries, while "kidney bean" simply describes the shape of the dried seed. English cookery long treated the pod itself as the prize, which is why the entry opens by fussing over variety and strings: before modern stringless breeding, the fibrous seam along the back made a mature pod close to inedible, and the lengthways slicing looks like a way of rescuing beans that had been left on the plant too long. The closing suggestion of beans in brown gravy "as a course after the meat" reflects an older order of service that was being displaced over this period by service à la russe.