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String Beans with Cream
Prepare the beans, and then place them in a saucepan of slightly salted water, boiling until quite tender. Meanwhile put the yolks of three or four eggs in a basin and beat them up with a little cream, adding some warmed butter, and beating well. Pour this mixture into a saucepan on the fire, and, when quite hot, mix in a little vinegar together with the beans. After they have been drained, remove the pan to the side of the fire, and steam gently for six or seven minutes, stirring constantly. When done, turn out onto a dish, and serve at once.
A short recipe that hides a real technique: this is a warm egg-yolk and cream sauce, closer to a loose hollandaise than to anything poured from a jug. Everything depends on heat control.
- The hinge: never let the yolks boilThe yolk, cream and butter mixture thickens between about 160F and 180F and scrambles above that. Use the lowest burner setting or a bowl over barely simmering water, and pull it off the heat the moment it coats the spoon.
- "Remove the pan to the side of the fire"On a coal range the side of the firebox was the gentle spot. On a modern hob that means the smallest burner at its lowest setting, or off the heat entirely with the residual warmth of the pan doing the work.
- Add the vinegar carefullyAcid poured into a hot yolk sauce can tighten and split it. A teaspoon or two of white wine vinegar, stirred in off the heat, is enough to give the sour note intended here.
- "Boiling until quite tender"Period recipes often call for boiling green beans far longer than we would now. Five to seven minutes in well-salted water gives beans that are tender but still green; they then only need to be warmed through in the sauce, not steamed for another six.
- Prepare the beansAt the time this meant topping, tailing and pulling the fibrous string down each side. Most modern varieties are stringless, so trimming the stem end and halving long beans is all that is required.
- Drain thoroughlyWater clinging to the beans will thin the sauce and can make it break. Drain well and let them steam dry in the colander for a minute before they meet the yolks.
- Quantity and yieldThe original gives no bean weight. Three or four yolks with a few tablespoons of cream and butter will sauce about 1.5 to 2 lb of beans, serving six as a side dish.
- Serve at onceThe sauce will not hold or reheat. Warm the serving dish and bring it straight to the table.
String beans dressed with a warm egg-and-vinegar sauce is more a German and Austrian habit than a French one. The recipe's own name is a period marker. Beans were called string beans because most garden varieties had a tough fibre running along the pod that had to be pulled off by hand; stringless types began to be sold commercially in the 1890s. The instruction to move the pan "to the side of the fire" is another: it assumes a coal or wood range with a hot centre and cooler margins, useful for any sauce that must stay warm without boiling.