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Beans, French Mode of Cook- ing French
INGREDIENTS for dish for 3 persons.-1 lb. of French beans, 3 oz. of fresh butter, pepper and salt to taste, the juice of 1/2 lemon. AVERAGE COST, 2d. per lb.
Cut and boil the beans by recipe under "Beans, Boiled French," and when tender put them into a stewpan, and shake over the fire, to dry away the moisture from the beans. When quite dry and hot, add the butter, pepper, salt and lemon-juice; keep moving the stewpan, without using a spoon, as that would break the beans; and when the butter is melted, and all is thoroughly hot, serve. If the butter should not mix well, add a tablespoonful of gravy, and serve very quickly.
Time.-About 1/4 hour to boil the beans 10 minutes to shake them over the fire.
SEASONABLE from the middle of July to the end of September.
Beans, Haricots Blancs, or
A plain buttered green bean, finished by tossing rather than stirring so the cut beans stay whole. The whole point is dryness: wet beans will not take the butter.
- The hingeDrain the boiled beans and return them to a dry pan over heat until the surface moisture has steamed off before any butter goes in. Butter added to damp beans slides off into a watery pool instead of coating them.
- No spoonThe instruction to keep the pan moving without a spoon is worth following. Jerk the pan or use tongs sparingly; stirring breaks the cut beans.
- French beansThese are ordinary green beans, not the dried haricot. In the period they were commonly sliced lengthways on the diagonal into thin strips; whole beans or one-inch lengths work as well but need a longer boil than thin strips.
- Boiling timeThe stated time appears to have lost its fraction in this printing. Modern practice is 4-6 minutes in well-salted boiling water for slim beans, up to 8 for thick ones -- they should keep some bite, and this is shorter than a Victorian kitchen would have given them.
- Lemon juiceNo quantity is given for the lemon. Start with a teaspoon for a pound of beans and taste; the acid is there to lift the butter, not to dominate.
- If the butter splitsThe tablespoon of gravy helps pull the melted butter back together, the gelatine in meat stock acting as an emulsifier. A spoonful of the bean cooking water can be used instead and keeps the dish meat-free, though without the same gelatine.
- Butter quantityThree ounces (85 g) to a pound of beans is generous by current taste. Two ounces coats them adequately.
- YieldAs written, a side dish for three. Serve immediately; buttered beans go dull and greasy if held.
Mrs Beeton's household books distinguish sharply between the dried haricot and the fresh green pod, and the phrase "French beans" in nineteenth-century English cookery means the latter -- the immature pods of Phaseolus vulgaris, a New World plant that reached British gardens by way of France and kept the name. The seasonable note, mid-July to the end of September, is a reminder that the entry was written for people eating from a kitchen garden or a local market rather than from year-round imports, and the costing of twopence a pound places it among the cheapest vegetables on the table. The technique here -- boil, dry over the heat, then finish with butter off the boil -- is the standard Victorian method for any watery green vegetable, and it survives essentially unchanged in modern restaurant kitchens.