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German String Beans
1 quart beans 2 tablespoons shortening 1/2 teaspoon salt pepper 1/4 cup stock 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon sugar Wash, string and cook beans in boiling salted water. (Beans may be cooked long or cut in thirds.) When boiled for 30 minutes, drain them and cook in frying pan with shortening, seasonings and 1/4 cup of the bean stock. Simmer until tender. Serves 6.
A two-stage green bean dish: boiled first, then finished in fat with a little of the cooking liquid. The instructions are sound, but the timing belongs to an era when beans were cooked far past tender.
- Cut the boiling timeThirty minutes in boiling water leaves green beans olive-drab and limp. Five to seven minutes for whole beans, three to four for cut, then drain and move straight to the pan; they will finish cooking in the fat and stock.
- A quart of beansBeans here are measured by volume, as was common in the period. A quart of trimmed beans is roughly a pound, which is right for six modest side servings.
- "Stock" means the bean waterThe recipe calls for stock in the ingredient list, then specifies a quarter cup of the bean liquid in the method. Reserve it before draining; it carries salt and bean flavor that plain water does not.
- ShorteningIn a book of this period the word means vegetable shortening or lard. Butter or bacon fat both suit the dish, and are the likelier substitutes in a modern kitchen.
- The lemon and sugarA half teaspoon of juice and a teaspoon of sugar are seasoning, not a sauce. Add them at the end, off the heat if possible, so the acid stays bright.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon assumes the boiling water was salted and the bean liquid is salty. Taste before adding it all.
Green beans cooked in water and then finished in fat with a sweet-sour accent is a familiar German treatment, and shares its logic with hot bacon-dressed vegetables. (Saure Bohnen in German usage generally denotes beans preserved by salting or fermentation rather than a dish seasoned with lemon and sugar, so the resemblance is one of flavour rather than of the same dish.) American community and menu books of the interwar period carried many dishes labelled "German," which has been attributed both to the size of the German-American population and to a loose habit of applying the label to vegetables finished with vinegar or lemon and a little sugar. The thirty-minute boil is unlikely to be a German idiosyncrasy: long cooking times for green beans were usual in American domestic-science instruction of the period, and shorter cooking came later.