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Beans, Haricot, with Tomato Sauce
Soak one pint of beans for twelve hours, then put them into a saucepan with enough water to cover, add one onion, a piece of celery, a carrot, a turnip, one ounce of butter, and pepper and salt to taste. Boil slowly until soft, then take out the vegetables, drain the beans quickly, pile them high on a dish, and pour over them some thick tomato sauce. Garnish round with croutons. Probable cost, 8d.
A plain economy dish that depends on two things: beans cooked to genuine softness, and a tomato sauce reduced thick enough to coat rather than pool.
- A pint of beansDry beans were measured by volume, and an imperial pint is about 2.5 US cups, roughly 16 to 18 oz. That will yield several times its dry volume once cooked, enough for four to six as a side dish.
- Which beanHaricot here means the small white bean sold today as navy or haricot bean. Dried beans more than a year old may never soften properly, however long they are simmered.
- Boil slowly means simmerA hard boil bursts the skins and turns the pile into mush. Keep the water at a bare tremble, lid ajar, and top up with hot water so the beans stay covered. Expect 1 to 1.5 hours after a 12-hour soak.
- The vegetables are flavouringOnion, celery, carrot and turnip go in whole or in large pieces and are lifted out and discarded before serving. Cut them small and you will be fishing out fragments.
- Salt and acidSalt in the cooking water is no longer thought to toughen beans, so season as written. Acid does, which is why the tomato sauce goes on only at the end and never cooks with the beans.
- Thick tomato sauceThis suggests a sauce reduced until it holds its shape on a spoon rather than a thin passata; perhaps a cup for this quantity, poured over hot drained beans.
- CroutonsSmall dice or triangles of bread fried in butter or oil until crisp, arranged round the base of the pile. Add them at the table so they do not soften in the sauce.
- Probable cost, 8dEightpence for a dish that would feed a family. Cassell's gave a probable cost for almost every recipe, which would have helped a housekeeper plan against a fixed allowance.
Dried haricots were among the cheapest reliable protein in a late-Victorian larder: they kept indefinitely, needed no ice, and cost pennies a pint. The name travelled a long way to get here. Haricot is French, and is generally traced back to the Nahuatl ayacotl by way of the Spanish beans brought to Europe after the conquest of Mexico, though the word was also confused early on with the older French harigoter, to cut up, as in a haricot of mutton. Bottled and tinned tomato sauces were becoming more widely sold in Britain over the later nineteenth century, which may be part of what makes a dish like this plausible in an ordinary kitchen. The croutons are the one small gesture toward the dining room, turning a pot of beans into something that could be sent up on a dish.