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WINDSOR BEANS (a la Poulette)
Windsor beans are to be served at a good table only when very young and fresh-gathered. Boil them in salt and water. When nearly done drain them, and stew them in a little sauce tournee with a bunch of parsley and green onions, a little savory chopped very fine, and a small lump of sugar. When the beans are sufficiently reduced, throw in a thickening made of the yolks of two eggs and a little thick cream. Send them up in a short sauce, and properly seasoned.
A classical French treatment of broad beans, written for a kitchen that had a pot of velouté standing ready. The whole dish turns on the final liaison, which must be warmed and never boiled.
- Windsor beans are broad beansThe Windsor was a large-seeded strain of Vicia faba, sold today as broad beans or fava beans. Buy them in the pod and reckon on about 3 lb of pods to yield 1 lb of shelled beans, enough for four as a side dish.
- "Very young and fresh-gathered"This is not decoration. Young beans need only their outer pod removed; anything past thumbnail size develops a tough grey skin. Blanch older beans two minutes, cool them, and slip each one out of its jacket before the final stew, or the finished dish will be leathery.
- Sauce tournéeA pale velouté: veal or chicken stock thickened with a blond roux and, in the classical kitchen, mushroom trimmings. A cup of good chicken stock thickened with a tablespoon each of butter and flour, simmered fifteen minutes and strained, stands in for it perfectly well.
- The liaison is the hingeTwo egg yolks beaten with a few tablespoons of cream go in off the heat. Temper them with a ladle of the hot sauce first, return the pan to a low flame, and stir until it coats a spoon at around 175F. A boil after this point curdles the sauce and no amount of whisking brings it back.
- SavorySummer savory, the traditional partner to beans across northern Europe, sharp and faintly thyme-like. Use about a teaspoon chopped fine; winter savory is coarser and wants half as much.
- Boiling timesVery young shelled beans need three to five minutes in salted water, older double-podded ones about five to seven. "Nearly done" means they still have a slight bite, since they finish in the sauce.
- "A short sauce"Reduced until it clings to the beans rather than pooling around them. Do the reducing before the yolks go in, not after.
- FavismWorth knowing rather than worrying about: broad beans provoke a serious haemolytic reaction in people with G6PD deficiency, most common in those of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. It is a fixed sensitivity in the eater, not a fault in the cooking.
Broad beans are among the oldest cultivated pulses in Europe, eaten long before the haricot and the runner arrived from the Americas, and the name "Windsor" belonged to a broad, flat, large-seeded strain that English seedsmen had been listing from the eighteenth century. The entry's insistence that the bean belongs at a good table only when very young reflects a preference for immature beans; whether it had also slipped down the social scale by the time Cassell's was compiled is not something this entry can settle. The treatment a la poulette is French classical practice, meaning a pale velouté finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, and the name is generally traced to the sauce's early association with chicken. Applying it to a homely bean is the sort of manoeuvre by which Victorian cookery books elevated English kitchen-garden produce into something fit for a dinner service.