No. 2701

White Beans, Thickened Maitre d'Hotel and Bretonne

Haricots Blancs Maitre d'Hotel Liee et Bretonne

Put a pound of dry white beans to soak in cold water for six hours; place them in a saucepan and cover to three times above their height with cold water; set this on the fire and withdraw the saucepan to the side of the range at the first boil; add to it two ounces of butter, let cook, and when they crush easily under the pressure of the finger drain and transfer to another saucepan; season with salt, prepared red pepper (No. 168) and nutmeg; add a little thickened maitre d'hotel butter and chopped parsley.

Bretonne.—Add chopped onions, cooked colorless in butter, to the above, and instead of the maitre d'hotel butter substitute espagnole sauce (No. 414), finishing with chopped parsley.

← No. 2700 Red Beans, Smothered Beans, Peas & Lentils No. 2702 Beetroot Fritters a la Dickens; Beetroots wi →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a stocked professional larder, so the two finishing elements are cross-references rather than instructions. Everything else is straightforward slow-simmered beans.

The hinge: salt lateSeason only after the beans are tender and drained, exactly as written. Acid added at the start does slow the softening of the skins; whether early salt does is disputed, and modern testing suggests it does little harm.
Quantity and yieldA pound of dry beans is roughly 2 1/4 cups and swells to about 6 cups cooked. That serves eight as a side dish.
Cooking timeSoaked cannellini, flageolet or Great Northern beans need 45 to 90 minutes at a bare simmer, depending on age. "Withdraw to the side of the range" means move them off direct heat to hold a lazy simmer; a hard boil breaks the skins.
"Prepared red pepper (No. 168)"The cross-reference points to Ranhofer's own red pepper preparation, which appears to be cayenne-based. Plain cayenne, used sparingly, is the practical modern stand-in; this is a background warmth, not heat you should taste.
Thickened maitre d'hotel butterMaitre d'hotel butter is softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. "Liee" (thickened) most likely indicates that the finish is bound rather than plain melted butter -- a spoonful of thick veloute or a little flour worked into the butter will do it, though Ranhofer does not say. Stir it in off the heat.
Espagnole for the BretonneThe classic brown sauce is a day's work in itself. A well-reduced brown veal or beef stock, lightly thickened, gives the same effect; you want two or three tablespoons per pound of beans, no more, or the dish becomes a stew.
Cooking the onions "colorless"Sweat the chopped onion in butter over low heat with a pinch of salt until translucent and soft, 10 to 12 minutes. Any browning shifts the flavour toward a different dish entirely.
The cooking liquidThe beans are drained, but keep a cup of the liquor. It is the right thing for loosening the beans if the butter or sauce tightens them on standing.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set the whole repertoire down in numbered order, each recipe leaning on the sauces and preparations catalogued elsewhere in the book. The two treatments here are the standard French pair for a plain white bean: maitre d'hotel, meaning finished with parsley-and-lemon butter, and bretonne, associated with Brittany and built on sweated onion. Modern versions of haricots a la bretonne often add tomato and garlic; Ranhofer's is a plainer reading -- onion softened in butter and bound with espagnole, the great brown mother sauce that a nineteenth-century professional kitchen kept going by the gallon. White beans were a classical accompaniment to roast mutton and leg of lamb.