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Beans with Onions
1 pint (2 cups) cooked beans 1 oz. (1 heaping tablespoonful) flour 3 large chopped onions 2 ozs. (2 heaping tablespoonfuls) butter Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 pint (I cup) water or stock Melt the butter in a fireproof dish, then fry the onion in it till a light brown color, sprinkle in the flour, salt and pepper, then stir in the cooked beans and the water or stock.
Bake till thoroughly hot and serve with roast meat. 4 Spanish onions 2 sheep's kidneys
A plain baked bean and onion side dish from the era when "casserole" meant the vessel rather than the dish made in it. The quantities are workable as given; the only vagueness is the oven and the timing.
- Fireproof dishThe recipe's term for a vessel that will take direct heat on the range and then go into the oven. Any heavy ovenproof skillet or Dutch oven does the same work, since the onions are browned on the stovetop before baking.
- Oven and timingNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, will do; the recipe asks only that the dish be baked "till thoroughly hot." The beans are already cooked, so this stage is about heating through.
- BeansA pint of cooked beans is about one and a half 15-oz cans, drained, or roughly 3/4 cup dried beans soaked and simmered until tender. Haricot or navy beans suit the dish; the original assumes plain water-cooked beans with no sauce.
- Weights to volume1 oz flour is about 3 1/2 level tablespoons by modern measure, not the single heaping spoonful the book equates it with. 2 oz butter is 4 tablespoons, which is accurate.
- Brown the onions properlyThree large chopped onions in 4 tablespoons of butter need 15 to 20 minutes over medium heat to reach light brown. Rushing this leaves the dish flat, since the onions are the only seasoning besides salt and pepper.
- The flourSprinkle it over the browned onions and let it cook a minute before the liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes pasty. Note that the full 1 oz of flour against a cup of stock will give a distinctly thick sauce; the book's "heaping tablespoonful" would give a lighter one.
- YieldServes four as a side dish. Stock rather than water makes a noticeable difference; the recipe offers no other flavouring.
Cookbooks devoted to "casserole dishes" appeared in English and American kitchens in the early twentieth century, when fireproof earthenware and the newly available heatproof glass let a cook brown food on the range and finish it in the oven in the same vessel, then bring it to table. The appeal was economy of fuel and washing-up as much as flavour. This particular recipe belongs to the older British tradition of haricot beans served as an accompaniment to roast meat rather than as a dish in their own right, dressed with little more than butter, browned onion and a flour-thickened stock. It is a reminder that before canned baked beans in tomato sauce became standard, a household bean dish was savoury, oniony and unsweetened.