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Beans, French (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Prepare and boil 1 pound of beans in the usual manner; see that they are well drained from the water. Keep them hot, and when dry put them into a stewpan with 2 ounces of melted butter, half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, a little salt, and a teaspoonful of lemon juice. Shake the pan over a brisk fire, mix well, and serve hot in eight minutes. Sufficient for four persons.
A plain maître d'hôtel finish for green beans: butter, parsley, lemon. The only thing that can go wrong is water, so drain hard and dry the beans before the butter goes near them.
- "French beans" are green beansThis means fresh green beans in the pod, not dried haricots. Nineteenth-century books often direct that they be topped, tailed and strung and then sliced, lengthways or slantwise, into thin strips; whole slim beans work equally well.
- "The usual manner"Boil in well-salted water, uncovered, until just tender with some bite left: about 4 minutes for thin beans, 6 to 8 for thicker sliced ones. Cookery of this period generally boiled green beans longer than that, so the dish as written would come out softer than a modern cook might expect.
- Drain and dryThis is the hinge. Any clinging water thins the butter into a grey puddle instead of a glaze. Drain in a colander, shake it, then return the beans to the hot dry pan for a few seconds to steam off surface moisture.
- 2 ounces of butterAbout 4 tablespoons, or half a standard stick, for a pound of beans. That is a generous amount by modern habit; half of it still coats the beans adequately.
- "Melted butter"In books of this period the phrase sometimes means a flour-thickened butter sauce, but here it is simply butter melted. Do not brown it; the parsley and lemon are meant to taste fresh.
- Brisk fireMedium-high heat, and keep the pan moving. The shaking emulsifies the lemon juice and butter into a light coating rather than letting them separate.
- "Serve hot in eight minutes"The eight minutes most likely covers the finishing and getting the dish to table rather than eight minutes of cooking in the pan; the buttering itself takes under a minute once the beans are hot.
- YieldA pound of beans for four is a modest side portion; count on it stretching no further.