Name: Haricot Bean Stew
Ingredients: 1 pint haricot beans; 1½ pints boiling water; 1 tablespoon dripping; 1 pint brown gravy

Haricot Bean Stew

Ingredients

1 pint haricot beans
1½ pints boiling water
1 tablespoon dripping
1 pint brown gravy

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the beans as you would for a vegetable.

Cook the beans

Place the beans in a saucepan with the boiling water and dripping.
Cook gently for 1½ hours, or until the beans are quite soft.
Strain the beans, reserving the cooking water for the brown gravy.

Serve

Pour the gravy over the beans without straining and serve hot.

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

Haricot beans: Form the body of the stew and soften into a tender, creamy texture when cooked slowly.
Dripping: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the beans as they cook.
Brown gravy: Adds savoury depth and moisture, coating the beans when poured over them.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 1½ hours, or until the beans are quite soft. Haricot beans contain starches that only become tender after prolonged, gentle simmering. Cooking too hard can break the skins and leave the beans mushy, while undercooking leaves them firm and grainy.

“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.