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Mashed Beans
This is the only way in which old beans may be cooked to advantage. They should be first boiled in the ordinary way fully half an hour, by which time the skins will have burst, and they may be easily removed. Mash them with the back of a wooden spoon until quite smooth, then put them back into the stewpan with a little sugar, butter, pepper, and salt. Add a cupful of whipped cream-or 2 eggs well beaten-whip the whole until very light; place in baking-dish and brown in quick oven; serve in pudding form.
A purée-and-bake treatment for shell beans that have grown too large and starchy to serve whole. The hinge is the skins: get them off, or no amount of mashing will make the dish smooth.
- What "old beans" meansAlmost certainly not dried beans, but fresh shelled beans left on the plant too long; in an English kitchen the likeliest candidates are broad (fava) beans, though mature lima or runner beans would behave the same way. Their skins have toughened and the interior has gone mealy, which is what makes them good for mashing and bad for serving whole.
- The half hour is deliberateHalf an hour would ruin young beans, but tough mature ones need it before the skins split. Once split, slip the skins off with your fingers while the beans are still warm; cold beans grip their skins.
- Quick oven425-450F. The dish is already cooked through going in, so the oven is only there to set the eggs and colour the top -- 15 to 20 minutes is usually enough.
- StewpanAny wide, heavy saucepan. Return the mash to it over low heat to drive off surplus water before the enrichments go in, or the finished purée will be loose.
- Cream or eggs, not bothThe whipped cream gives a light, fragile purée that will slump; the two beaten eggs set and hold their shape, which is what "serve in pudding form" implies. Choose the eggs if you want it to come out of the dish in a wedge.
- A little sugarThe recipe calls for it, and it does flatter broad beans in particular. A teaspoon for a pound of shelled beans is plenty; more and it reads as dessert.
- Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given. Roughly 3 lb of beans in the pod, or about 1 lb shelled, with a couple of tablespoons of butter and the 2 eggs, fills a small baking dish and serves four as a side.