Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/405

 eaten with salt and pepper. It will be greatly improved at small cost by the addition of a bit of butter, or of melted butter with parsley, or if an onion or two have been sliced and stewed with the haricots. A better dish still may be made by putting all, or part, after boiling, into a shallow frying-pan and lightly frying for a few minutes with a little lard and some sliced onions. With a few slices of bacon added, a comparatively luxurious and highly nutritive meal may be made. But there is still in the saucepan, after boiling, a residue of value, which the French peasant's wife, who turns everything to account, utilizes in a manner quite incomprehensible to the Englishwoman. The water in which dried haricots have stewed, and also that in which green French beans have been boiled, contain a proportion of nutritious matter. The Frenchwoman always preserves this liquor carefully, cuts and fries some onions, adds these and some thick slices of bread, a little salt and pepper with a pot-herb or two from the corner of the garden, and thus serves hot an agreeable and useful croûte au pot. It ought to be added that the haricots so largely used by the working classes throughout Europe are not precisely either "red" or "white," but some cheaper local varieties, known as haricots du pays. These, I am assured on good authority, could be supplied here at about twopence a pound, their quality as food being not inferior to other kinds.

But haricots—let them be the fine white Soissons—are good enough to be welcome at any table. A roast leg or shoulder of mutton should be garnished by a pint boiled as just directed, lying in the gravy of the dish; and some persons think that, with a good supply of the meat gravy, and a little salt and pepper, "the haricots are by no means the worst part of the mutton." Then with a smooth purée of mild onions, which have been previously sliced, fried brown, and stewed, served freely as sauce, our leg of mutton and haricots become the gigot à la bretonne well known to all lovers of wholesome and savory cookery. Next, white haricots stewed until soft, made into a rather thick purée, delicately flavored by adding a small portion of white purée of onions (not browned by frying as in the preceding sauce), produce an admirable garnish for the center of a dish of small cutlets, or an entrée of fowl, etc. Again, the same haricot purée blended with a veal stock, well flavored with fresh vegetables, furnishes an admirable and nutritious white soup. The red haricots in like manner with a beef stock make a superlative brown soup, which, with the addition of portions of game, especially of hare, forms, for those who do not despise economy in cuisine where the result attained is excellent, a soup which in texture and in flavor would by many persons not be distinguishable from a common purée of game itself. Stewed haricots also furnish, when cold, an admirable salad, improved by adding slices of tomato, etc., the oil supplying the one element in which the bean is deficient; and a perfectly nutritious food is produced for those who can digest it