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Haricot Beans, Puree Of
Put a quart of beans in to soak overnight, with a little piece of soda in the water to soften it. Next morning put the beans to boil in three quarts of water, with some carrot, celery, and onion, or the beans can be boiled in stock made from these vegetables. After the haricots are tender pound them in a mortar, and then rub through a wire sieve, after removing the vegetables. Add a tea-spoonful of pounded sugar and about two ounces of butter. Fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup, and a little boiling cream added to the soup is a great improvement.
A straightforward Victorian purée soup, thickened by nothing but the beans themselves. Two things need attention: the soda, and the fact that no salt is mentioned anywhere.
- A quart of beansDry measure: somewhere between 1 lb 12 oz and 2 lb (800-900 g) of dried white haricot or navy beans, depending on whether the quart is read as US or imperial; British sources of this period mean the larger measure. Soaked, they will roughly double in bulk. This makes a great deal of soup — on the order of 8 to 10 servings.
- The piece of sodaBicarbonate softens hard water and speeds the skins, but it also degrades thiamine and can leave a soapy edge and a sludgy texture. With beans bought in the last year it is unnecessary; a plain overnight soak is enough.
- SaltThe recipe never mentions it. Season at the end, once the beans are fully tender, and taste before adding the sugar.
- The vegetablesCarrot, celery and onion go in whole or in large pieces so they can be lifted out before sieving. If you use a vegetable stock instead, you still want a fresh onion and carrot in the pot while the beans cook to tenderness.
- Mortar and sieveA blender or food processor does the pounding in seconds, but do not skip the sieve — haricot skins stay in tough flecks and the whole point of a purée soup is the smoothness. A food mill fitted with the fine plate handles both steps at once.
- ConsistencyThree quarts of water to a quart of beans gives a purée close to porridge by the time it is sieved. Loosen it with hot stock or the reserved cooking liquid to the thickness of cream before the butter goes in.
- The creamHeat it separately and stir it in off the heat, as the recipe implies. A thick bean purée held over direct heat after the cream goes in is liable to catch on the bottom of the pan.
- ServingThe fried or toasted bread would be sippets, fingers or dice of bread; handing them round separately keeps them crisp.
Purée soups of this kind were a fixed category in nineteenth-century English cookery, sitting alongside clear soups and thickened "white" soups in the standard classification, and this one demonstrates the technique: a vegetable cooked to collapse, pounded, sieved, and enriched with butter and cream, with no roux or egg to hold it together. Haricot is the French name — the word is often traced to the older verb harigoter, to cut up, though some link it instead to the Nahuatl ayacotl, since the bean itself came to Europe from the Americas. In Victorian Britain the dried white bean was cheap, kept indefinitely, and carried enough protein to stand as a meatless dinner during Lent or on a tight household budget, and the pulse purées appear often in the general-purpose dictionaries of the period.