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String Beans and Squashes Saute'
(Fagiolini e zucchini sautè) Brown in butter some string beans, that have been previously half cooked in water and some raw squashes cut in cubes. Put the squashes in only when the butter is beginning to brown. Season moderately with salt and butter and add some brown stock or good tomato sauce.
A two-vegetable sauté with almost no measurements, in the shorthand style of Italian household cookery books of the period. The technique is the whole recipe: the beans go in first because they are already partly cooked, the zucchini later because they need to hit fat that is already browning.
- "Squashes" means zucchiniThe Italian in the title is zucchini, translated literally as "squashes" for an American audience that did not yet know the word. Use small firm zucchini, not winter squash, and cut them into roughly half-inch cubes.
- Half-cook the beans, no moreBoil trimmed string beans in salted water for about four minutes, until they bend but still snap, then drain well. They finish in the butter, and beans that were boiled through will collapse into grey strings in the pan.
- Dry the vegetablesBoth the drained beans and the cut zucchini should be patted dry. Wet vegetables drop the pan temperature and steam instead of browning, which defeats the point of the dish.
- The timing hinge"Put the squashes in only when the butter is beginning to brown" is the instruction that matters. Zucchini added to pale butter weeps water and turns to mush; added to butter at the nut-brown stage it takes colour on the cut faces before the interior softens.
- "Season with salt and butter"The text as printed reads "Season moderately with salt and butter", which is odd given that the vegetables are already browning in butter; it may be a slip for salt and pepper, though the book as printed says butter. If you read it as pepper, season with salt and black pepper; more butter at this stage would only make the pan greasy.
- The finishing liquidThe recipe gives no quantity. A glaze rather than a braise seems the likelier intention, so add the brown stock or tomato sauce in small amounts, two or three tablespoons at a time, letting each addition cook away.
- Quantities and yieldAbout a pound of string beans and a pound of zucchini, in two to three tablespoons of butter, serves four as a side dish. Cook in a wide pan, or in two batches, so the vegetables sit in a single layer.
This comes from Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919), one of a run of small American volumes that set out to explain Italian home cooking to English-speaking households, usually by translating Italian recipes very closely and leaving the original names in parentheses. The bare, assume-nothing style here — no quantities, no times, just the order of operations — is broadly typical of Italian domestic recipe writing of the period, which tended to assume the cook already knew what a properly browned pan of butter looked like. The translation of zucchini as "squashes" suggests the word was not yet in general American use. Butter rather than olive oil is often taken as a northern marker, and sautéed vegetables finished with a spoonful of meat stock or tomato sauce are common in northern Italian cooking, where similar treatments are given to peas, artichokes and fennel.