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Dried Beans Sauté
Cook the beans until tender but not broken. Drain off the water, and save it for soup. For one quart of beans, put three tablespoons of butter in a sauté pan. When the butter is hot, put in the dried beans, which have been seasoned with a tablespoon of salt and one-half teaspoon of pepper. Cook over a hot fire for fifteen minutes, frequently turning the beans with a fork. Cover, and cook for half an hour where they will not burn. If the beans are liked moist, add a cup of milk or water the last half hour of cooking. They must be cooked until all the liquid is absorbed or if any remains when the beans are tender it must be drained off. They may be served with a tomato sauce.
A plain skillet treatment for already-cooked beans, from an era when a pot of beans was a standing feature of the kitchen. Two details need attention: the salt, and the fact that the quart is measured after cooking.
- A quart means cooked beansA quart probably means cooked beans -- the beans are already boiled tender when they go into the pan, so the quart most likely describes the cooked yield, though the text does not say so outright and still calls them "dried beans." A quart is about 1.5 lb cooked, or two and a half to three 15-oz cans drained, or roughly 10-12 oz of dry beans soaked and simmered.
- Cut the saltA tablespoon of salt for a quart of beans is far more than modern palates accept, and beans boiled in salted water or canned beans are already seasoned. Start with a teaspoon and taste as you go.
- Save the pot liquorThe instruction to keep the cooking water is worth following. Bean broth is starchy and savoury and thickens a soup without flour; refrigerate it and use within a few days, or freeze.
- "A hot fire"Medium-high on a modern burner. Fifteen minutes of frequent turning is meant to dry the surface of the beans and brown them a little, not to stew them.
- The covered half hour"where they will not burn" most likely points to a cooler part of the range. Use low heat, a heavy pan, and check once or twice. With canned beans this stage can be shortened to fifteen minutes, since they are softer to begin with and will break down.
- Turning with a forkA fork rather than a spoon keeps the beans whole. Stir from underneath and lift; scraping and folding will mash them.
- Moist or dryThe cup of milk gives a creamier, softer dish; water keeps it lean and lets the browning show. Either way cook it off entirely, or drain, so the beans are not sitting in liquid.
- YieldFour to six servings as a main course, more as a side. A simple tomato sauce, as suggested, or a spoonful of vinegar at the end, lifts a dish that is otherwise very plain.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a wave of American cookbooks published around the First World War, when meat conservation was a matter of public campaign as well as household economy, and "Meat Substitutes" became a standard chapter heading. Dried beans were the obvious candidate: cheap, storable, and understood even then to be the vegetable food closest to meat in nourishment. Sautéing boiled beans in butter is a way of turning a plain pot of them into a dish that could hold the centre of a plate. The technique is old and widespread, from the refried beans of Mexico to the fried beans and greens of Italian country cooking, and it survives for the same reason it appears here, that browned starch and fat taste better than boiled starch alone.