Bay Leaf
This is indeed poetry in the pot-Daphne at our lips. There is scarcely a savoury dish made which is not perfumed with a faggot of herbs and one of these Béarnaise herbs is a bay leaf. It is the only use to which we now put our laurels. The Greeks had their crowns of laurel and of parsley. We with all humility cast our crowns of laurel and of parsley into the pot. What a glorious thing it would be if the bays we have given over to our cooks would bring them the inspiration of great Apollo and ensure to us dinners worthy of the gods!
BEANS are more than beans, good for food and pleasant to the taste: they are a moral lesson. The priests of Egypt held it a crime even to look at beans-the very sight of them unclean. Lucian introduces a philosopher in hell declaring that it would be difficult to say which were the greater crime to eat beans, or to eat one's father's head. Pythagoras forbade his disciples to eat beans, because they are formed of the rotten ooze out of which man was created. The Romans ate beans at funerals with awe, from the idea that the souls of the dead were in them. Two thousand years pass by, and here are we now eating beans with the most thorough enjoyment and the most perfect unconcern. Moral-Get rid of prejudice and call nothing unclean. Windsor beans are the best-so called because this variety was first cultivated at Windsor by Dutch gardeners. There is still a garden near Eton called the Dutchman's Garden. Whether for a garnish or for a dish by themselves, they are to be simply boiled with salt and served with a Maître d'Hôtel or a Poulette sauce. It is a question whether in being sent to table they are to be skinned or not. The skins are troublesome-therefore skin them, The skins, although not swallowed, have an agreeable bitter-therefore leave them on. Each one must choose for himself.
The kidney or French bean is of a different species, and it is in every way most convenient to call it by the wellknown name of haricot, accepted throughout Europe. BÉARNAISE-Filet à la Béarnaise. This is not a local dish, as the name seems to indicate. It is a mode of Beauvilliers serving the fillet steak invented by the great chef who left the service of the Duchess of Berri to preside over the Hôtel Henri Quatre at St. Germains, which is to Paris what the Star and Garter at Richmond is to London. In honour of Henri IV. he named the sauce for his steak (equally good for a mutton chop) - Béarnaise. It is a butter-sauce, and may be described shortly as a hot mayonnaise. Many cooks make a fuss about this sauce, and pretend that it requires a long preparation. It is very simple, as will be seen from the receipt, and can be produced perfectly in a quarter of an hour. The only difficulty about it is, that it requires the addition of chopped tarragon, which is not always in season.
Béarnaise Sauce is made with yolks of eggs and ounces of butter in equal numbers-say four-as follows. Put the yolks of eggs with one ounce of butter and a little salt and pepper on the fire, and stir them till they begin to thicken. Take them off the fire, add a second ounce of butter, and stir them over the fire for two minutes more. Take them off again for the third ounce, and yet again for the fourth ounce, and proceed as before. Lastly, add a tablespoonful of chopped tarragon, or one of ravigote and a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar.