Skip to main content
Main

Boiled White Beans

Boiled white beans cooked slowly until tender, lightly salted before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Boiled White Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and rinse the beans in two warm waters.

  2. Cover the beans with cold water, using three to four times their quantity.

Cook

  1. Boil slowly until the beans are done but unbroken, about 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. If more water is needed while cooking, add it boiling hot; never add cold water after boiling begins.

Season and serve

  1. Lightly salt the beans before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

White beans
Form the dish's body, softening into a creamy interior during slow simmering while holding their shape.
Cold water
Hydrates the dry beans so they cook evenly through as they soften.

The step that matters

Add hot water, never cold, once boiling has begun. Adding cold water to a boil drops the pot's temperature sharply, which can toughen the bean skins and stall cooking, leaving the beans unevenly textured. Adding boiling water keeps the simmer steady.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes