The spirit of cookery

The beau plant is interesting and instructive, not only chemically, but also biologically, because of its reactions under the influence of night and day. Its leaves droop at night and are drawn together, and are raised and expanded again with daylight. This action is produced by a special apparatus, which is fixed and easily visible at the base of every leaf. Thus, there is perhaps some connection between the sensitiveness of this plant and the fact that it elaborates a nutriment for brain and muscles. Steived scarlet runners (Turkish beans) should always be prepared with essence of meat, and their juice should be well reduced. French green beans are very insipid when boiled in water, but when stetved with broth become an excellent dish. Green broad beans may also be plainboiled, and accompanied with a sauce or stewed. Stewed green beans improve in taste by being warmed up, probably by concentration. Haricot beans are the fruit of Phaseolus vulgaris. It is related by ancient writers that the great mathematician Pythagoras ordered his disciples to abstain from beans. We have been unable to find any record of the grounds of that interdict, and are inclined to doubt the allegation. It is probable that the beans received the prefix of haricot from their being used in a stew called haut-ragoût, gradually corrupted to haricot. These beans, ordinarily white and dry and hard, have of late years been brought into the market, in the month of November, in a green state. Many of those which we examined had rootlets. When stewed they looked and tasted much like the dry haricot similarly prepared. They had probably been treated like the barley for malting, made to germinate, but simultaneously exposed to light so as to become green. For the culinary preparation of haricots, it is essential that they should be swelled in soft water — i.e., water free from chalk and gypsum, or carbonate and sulphate of lime. Distilled water is the best. Eain water and river water may be used in places ; but when there is hard water only available, it should be softened by being boiled for half an hour, with the addition of a small quantity of carbonate of soda, a lump of the size of a filbert being sufficient for a quart of water. Further, the soaking of the beans must be effected during a sufficiency of time, not less than eight hours, and preferably overnight— f.e., during from twelve to eighteen hours. The stewing then becomes an easy process. Broth or standard solution of meat essence should always be added, as well as some butter ; and the sauce surrounding the haricots at the conclusion of the coction should only just 'be sufficient to moisten them, be bound with them, and not flowing. With these precautions rigorously enforced, haricot beans are a tasty, agreeable savory — in short, an elegant dish, and easily digestible ; they are also highly nutritious, and accessible by their price to all people who cook. The ripe beans of all varieties of Phaseolus contain only 13’6 per cent, of water ; 23T2 per cent, of nitrogenized matters (of these nearly half, 11 per cent., is legumin) ; 2 '28 per cent, of fat ; materials free from nitrogen, mainly starch, 53’63 per cent. ; woody fibre, 3 ‘84 per cent. ; inorganic matter, as ash, 3 '53 per cent. Turnips.