Green Beans with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

• young French beans
• a sprinkling of salt
• a lump of fresh butter
• a squeeze of lemon
• a tablespoonful or more of cream
• Dessertspoonful of butter
• ditto fine flour or maizena
• 2 spoonfuls of boiling water or milk
• a little salt

Method

1. 1

   Layer green beans in a jar with salt.

2. 2

   When ready, boil, drain, and add butter and lemon juice.

3. 3

   For cream sauce, rub butter and flour together, add boiling water or milk, stir until smooth, then add cream.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper (1902) by Hildagonda J. Duckitt, page 22. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

young French beans every day, so that they do not become coarse or stringy. We then get a large earthenware jar and lay in it alternately a layer of freshly-gathered French beans, and on them a sprinkling of salt, and so on till the jar is filled, ending with plenty of salt at the top. If preserved like this they keep well ; and when wanted we take them out, wash them well and lay them in water for a time to prevent their being too salt. (A friend tells me in England they do the same, using an earthen jar with a slate on top weighted with a stone or brick, and buried below the reach of frost.) The beans can be boiled, cut up or whole whichever is preferred, then drained, warmed up, and a lump of fresh butter and a squeeze of lemon added, and a little chopped parsley on the top ; or they can be served with white cream sauce made as follows — Cream Sauce. — Dessertspoonful of butter, ditto fine flour or maizena rubbed well together. Add 2 spoonfuls of boiling water or milk, a little salt ; and when stirred quite smoothly over the fire for a few minutes add a tablespoonful or more of cream

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.