Home › CHAPTER XI › CHAPTER XI: Green
CHAPTER XI: Green
GREEN SHELL BEANS (Lima, Cranberry, Kidney, etc.) Put the shelled beans over the fire in boiling, salted water to cover; let boil five minutes, then simmer until tender. It will take an hour or an hour and a half. When tender the water should be nearly evaporated. Add salt (half a teaspoonful to a pint), black pepper and two tablespoonfuls of butter or one-fourth a cup of cream.
STRING BEANS Snip off the ends, at the same time pulling off the strings if present, break into two or three pieces or put several beans together on a meat board and with a sharp knife cut all at once into about three pieces. Wash in cold water, drain and set to cook in boiling, salted water. It will take about two hours. String beans should be cooked when freshly gathered, otherwise make ready for cooking and let stand an hour or more in cold water. When cooked season with salt and pepper and add butter or cream. They are good in cream sauce, and, cold, make a good salad when dressed with oil, vinegar and a little onion juice.
STRING BEANS WITH BACON Cut one or two slices of tender bacon in tiny cubes and cook in a frying pan to a delicate brown. Add a pint of hot, cooked-and-drained string beans and it liked a grating of onion or a few drops of onion juice. Shake the frying pan, to mix thoroughly. Add half a teaspoonful of salt and one-fourth a teaspoonful of pepper and turn into a hot dish. Peas and Lima beans (fresh or dried) may be prepared in the same way.
VEGETABLES CONTAINING SUGAR WITH LITTLE STARCH For general directions in regard to cooking, see first pages of the chapter. GREEN PEAS If possible do not shell the peas until just before it is time to cook them. Add boiling water to just cover the peas; add salt, half a teaspoonful to a pint of water, and let the contents of the saucepan simmer until the peas are tender. It will take about twenty minutes. When the peas are cooked the water should be reduced to a few spoonfuls. Add one or two tablespoonfuls of butter, a little black pepper and serve at once.
GREEN PEAS, CREAMED Cook as above and pour over a cup and a half of peas a scant cup of white sauce. Make the sauce after the usual formula, but as there will be a little liquid in the peas, use a little less liquid in making the sauce. Rich milk or thin cream may be used for the sauce.
CANNED PEAS Turn the peas from the can into a sieve and let the water from the cold water faucet run through them. Drain, add a few spoonfuls of boiling water, a teaspoonful of sugar, half a teaspoonful of salt and one-fourth a teaspoonful of black pepper. Cover close and let become very hot; then serve at once. Canned peas may also be stirred into cream sauce.
ASPARAGUS Scrape the scales and skin from the lower end of the asparagus stalks, then shorten (cut off) each stalk at the point where it begins to be tough. Tie the stalks in a bundle and set to cook in a small quantity of boiling, salted water. In the upper part of a double boiler the stalks may stand upright, the tender tips, which require the least cooking, being out of the water, will cook in the steam. Thirty to forty minutes' cooking is needed. If the stalks lie flat in water, they will cook in twenty or twenty-five minutes. Have ready two slices of toasted bread; dip the edges of the toast in the asparagus water and set them on the serving dish; dispose the asparagus on the toast and set into the oven. Beat two tablespoonfuls of butter to a cream; beat in two tablespoonfuls of flour, dilute with a little of the asparagus liquid, then stir into the rest of the liquid; let boil five or six minutes; add another tablespoonful of butter, salt if needed, and pour over the asparagus and toast.
ASPARAGUS AS PEAS Prepare the asparagus stalks as before, then cut them into half inch pieces. Cook in boiling, salted water to cover. Do not add water unless necessary to keep the vegetable from burning. When cooked add, for a pint, one-fourth a teaspoonful of pepper, salt if needed and two or three tablespoonfuls of butter.
A cluster of green-vegetable methods from a book scaled for a two-person household. The seasoning ratios still hold; almost none of the cooking times do.
- String beans: two hours is the headline problemModern snap beans, bred without the tough strings and fibre of 1900 varieties, are done in 5 to 8 minutes in boiling salted water and are already limp at 15. Two hours produces olive-drab mush. Cook until they bend but still snap when bitten.
- Shell beans still take timeThe hour to hour-and-a-half for fresh limas, cranberry or kidney beans is closer to right, though 30 to 45 minutes is usual now for young shelled limas. Note that these are fresh shell beans, not dried; dried beans of the same names need soaking and behave differently.
- AsparagusThirty to forty minutes belongs to thick, late-season, heavily peeled stalks. Today, 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water for pencil spears and 6 to 8 for thick ones. The upright double-boiler trick is sound in principle -- stems in water, tips in steam -- but scale the time down accordingly.
- PeasTwenty minutes suits mature shelled peas from the garden. Modern shelled or frozen peas need 3 to 5 minutes. The instruction to shell at the last moment is genuinely worth keeping: pea sugars convert to starch quickly after picking.
- Salt ratioHalf a teaspoon to a pint of water is about 1 teaspoon per quart -- lightly seasoned by current standards, where 1 tablespoon per quart is common for green vegetables. Adjust to taste, but the original amount is not a misprint.
- The asparagus sauce is a kneaded-butter thickeningThe asparagus sauce is a butter-and-flour paste thickening -- Butter creamed with an equal volume of flour, then let down with the hot cooking liquid. It is close to beurre manié in composition, though beurre manié is normally stirred in uncooked at the finish rather than boiled. Let it boil the full five or six minutes so the flour loses its raw taste, then add the extra tablespoon of butter as directed.
- Canned peasRinsing off the canning liquor and reheating briefly with a pinch of sugar remains a reasonable treatment. Frozen peas substitute directly; heat them through in a few spoonfuls of water rather than boiling.
- YieldThe book is framed for a two-person household, though these recipes state no servings. The pint of beans and cup and a half of peas used in the text can be taken as portions on that scale; scale the butter and seasoning by the same measure.
Cooking for Two came out of the Boston Cooking School tradition, and its vegetable chapters show that school's habit of sorting foods by chemistry -- here, "vegetables containing sugar with little starch" -- a scientific-housekeeping conceit that reflects the domestic-science movement's ambition to put cookery on a laboratory footing. The very long boiling times are not carelessness. Garden vegetables of the period were tougher and more fibrous, string beans genuinely had strings, and the prevailing belief was that vegetables should be cooked until thoroughly soft, both for digestibility and out of a general anxiety about raw or underdone produce. Plant breeding played a part in shortening these times, alongside changing taste; the stringless bean, generally credited to late nineteenth-century American seed breeding, was still spreading when this book was written, which is why the recipe hedges with "pulling off the strings if present." The asparagus-on-toast presentation, with the toast edges dipped in the cooking liquid, is a standard genteel service of the era, the toast serving to catch and hold the sauce.