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To Boil Green or French Beans

A method for boiling young green or French beans, cut into pieces and finished with pepper and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 2 ingredients
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To Boil Green or French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the strings from the beans with a knife.

  2. Take off both ends of each bean.

  3. Cut them in two or three pieces only, since if split or cut very small they become watery and lose much of their taste.

  4. Cut them slanting, as they look best that way.

  5. As you cut them, throw them into a pan of cold water and let them lie awhile.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil them an hour and a half.

  2. Make sure they are perfectly tender before taking them up.

  3. Drain and press them well.

  4. Season them with pepper.

  5. Mix a piece of butter into them.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Green beans (in the method)
Form the main body of the dish, and their tenderness after long boiling is the goal.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat to the cooked beans.

The step that matters

Make sure they are perfectly tender before taking them up.. Beans cooked only briefly stay fibrous and grassy. Testing for full tenderness before draining ensures a soft texture throughout the dish.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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