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Stewed White Beans
Boil the beans until quite tender; remove the rind from some streaky bacon and cut into pieces an inch long and half an inch thick, scald for five minutes in boiling water, drain and put in a stewpan and stir over the fire until of a light brown color, then add a little flour and stir for a few minutes longer; add a cupful of claret wine and a little water, seasoning with pepper, and simmer for twenty-five minutes. Drain the beans, place them in the stewpan with the bacon, adding a little butter, and toss over the fire till the butter is melted, and serve very hot.
A bean and bacon stew built on a claret pan sauce rather than stock. The whole dish turns on cooking the beans fully before they ever meet the wine, since acid halts softening.
- The beansDried white beans are meant — navy, cannellini or Great Northern. Soak overnight, then simmer in water until completely tender, an hour to an hour and a half depending on age. Once they hit the acidic claret sauce they will soften only very slowly, so firmness at that stage is difficult to correct.
- QuantityOscar gives none. About 1 lb dried beans (roughly 6 cups cooked) to 8 oz bacon and a cup of wine makes a sensible batch serving six as a side.
- Streaky baconThis is the belly cut, what Americans simply call bacon. Cut from a slab rather than rashers if you can, to get the inch-long, half-inch-thick pieces called for. A mildly cured, lightly smoked bacon, or pancetta, will sit closer to the dish than a heavily smoked supermarket product.
- Why scald itFive minutes in boiling water draws out excess salt and cure and firms the fat so the pieces brown rather than shatter. Drain and pat dry before frying or it will steam.
- ClaretIn the 1890s the word meant red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry red in that style, including American ones. Any dry, moderately tannic red works. Much of the alcohol simmers away over the twenty-five minutes; what chiefly remains is acidity and colour.
- The flourA tablespoon or two stirred into the rendered fat makes a small roux. Cook it a couple of minutes before the wine goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour.
- SeasoningOnly pepper is specified; the cured, though scalded, bacon presumably supplied most of the salt. Taste at the end — modern bacon varies enormously — and a bay leaf or a little thyme in the simmering sauce is in keeping.
- FinishingToss, do not stir hard. Tender beans break easily, and the point of the final butter is a glossy coating rather than a mash.
Beans stewed with salt pork or bacon and moistened with red wine is peasant cooking from across France and Germany, and Oscar Tschirky's version reads like a hotel kitchen's tidy translation of it — the same logic that produces cassoulet or a garbure, reduced to a garnish that could sit beside roast meat on a Waldorf plate. The scalding of the bacon, a restaurant habit meant to strip cure and smoke so the pork reads as richness rather than flavour of its own, suggests a professional rather than a domestic hand. Claret, in American usage of the 1890s, meant red Bordeaux or anything resembling it, and its presence here says something about who was eating: dried beans were cheap, but a cupful of wine poured into them was not a thrift measure. Oscar's book, published in 1896 while he was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, ran to thousands of such preparations, most of them written in this same telegraphic style that assumes a cook already knows the quantities.