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Beans, Boiled French
INGREDIENTS.-To each gallon of water allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt, a very small piece of soda. AVERAGE COST, 2d. per lb.
This vegetable should always be eaten young, as when allowed to grow too long it tastes stringy and tough when cooked.
Cut off the heads and tails, and a thin strip on each side of the beans to remove the strings; then divide each bean into 4 lengthways in a slanting direction, and as or 6 pieces, according to size, cutting them BEANS, BROAD. they are cut put them into cold water, with a small quantity of salt dissolved in it.
Have ready a saucepan of boiling water, with salt and soda in the above proportion; put in the beans, keep them boiling quickly, with the lid uncovered, and be careful that they do not get smoked. When tender, which may be ascertained by their sinking to the bottom of the saucepan, take them up, pour them into a colander, and when drained, dish, putting small pieces of butter on the top and serve with or without FRENCH BEANS. melted butter. When very young, beans are sometimes served whole: thus dressed, their colour and flavour are much better preserved, but the more general way of sending them to table is to cut them into thin strips.
TIME. Very young beans, 10 to 12 minutes; moderate size, 15 to 20 minutes, after the water boils.
SEASONABLE from the middle of July to the end of September, but may be had forced from February to the beginning of June.
Beans, Broad, à la Poulette. - INGREDIENTS for one vegetable dish. -2 pints of broad beans, 1/2 pint of stock or broth, a small bunch of savoury herbs, including parsley, a small lump of sugar, the yolk of 1 egg, 1/4 pint of cream or milk, pepper and salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
Procure some young and freshly-gathered beans, and shell sufficient to make 2 pints; boil them, as in the preceding recipe, until nearly done; then drain them and put them into a stewpan with the stock, BEANS, HARICOT. hot, and when on the point of simmering, serve. Should the beans be very large, the skin should be removed previously to boiling them.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the beans, 15 minutes to stew them in the stock.
SEASONABLE in July and August.
Two entries run together here: plain boiled French (green) beans, and broad beans à la poulette. The instructions for the green beans are complete enough to follow; the poulette needs some filling in.
- Leave out the sodaThe "very small piece of soda" is most likely bicarbonate of soda, added to help hold the green colour. Alkali degrades vitamin C, softens the pectin so the beans turn slack, and can leave a soapy taste. Salt alone, the heaped tablespoon per gallon the recipe already gives, is enough; a wide uncovered pan and a fast boil do more for colour than any alkali.
- "Do not get smoked"A warning aimed at coal and wood ranges, where a pan set badly over the fire picked up soot and smoke flavour. On a gas or electric hob it no longer applies.
- The doneness testBeans sinking to the bottom of the pan is a fair sign but a late one. Taste a piece at 4 to 5 minutes for slender young beans; the 10 to 20 minutes given here reflects older, coarser field varieties and will reduce modern supermarket beans to grey threads.
- StringingAlmost all green beans sold now are stringless. Top and tail them and skip the strip down each side; the diagonal cut into four to six pieces is worth keeping for looks and even cooking.
- Cold salted holding waterThe recipe has the cut beans wait in cold salted water, which is useful if you are preparing a large quantity ahead. Drain well before the beans go into the boiling water.
- For the broad beansTwo pints of shelled broad beans is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb podded, and will take somewhere between 3 and 4 lb of pods in the shell depending on how well filled they are; the recipe calls it one vegetable dish. Boil until nearly tender, then stew in the stock with the herbs and sugar.
- The poulette liaisonA poulette sauce is finished off the heat: beat the egg yolk with the cream, stir it into the pan liquid, and return it to a very low flame only until it thickens. It must not reach a simmer or the yolk will curdle, despite the recipe's "when on the point of simmering, serve."
- Skinning large broad beansWorth doing whenever the beans are past their first youth, when the skins go leathery and bitter. Blanching for a minute loosens them; the original suggests skinning before boiling, which is slower but keeps the halves whole.
- The pricesTwopence a pound and 1s. 4d. for a dish are Victorian retail figures and carry no useful modern equivalent.
French beans are the immature pods of Phaseolus vulgaris, a New World bean that reached European gardens in the sixteenth century and was long grown here chiefly for the dried seed; eating the whole green pod is the later refinement, and the English name is often said to reflect the practice having been picked up from French kitchen gardens. Broad beans, by contrast, are Vicia faba, an Old World crop grown in Britain since prehistory and for centuries a staple field bean rather than a garden luxury. The seasonal notes are the most telling part of the entry: French beans from mid-July to the end of September, with forced beans from February, mark the point at which market gardening and heated frames were beginning to stretch the English vegetable year for households that could pay for it.