The Treatment of Dry Vegetables

Traitement des légumes secs teaches the quiet rule behind tender beans: sound, recent-crop legumes need no soaking. Begin them in cold salted water, bring them up slowly, skim before the aromatics go in, then keep the pot at the gentlest boil. The beans hydrate as they cook, their skins stay composed, and their centres turn creamy rather than waterlogged.

The original formula expressed its salt against five quarts of water, a professional measure, and assumed a large saucepan kept under a cook's eye. Here, one pound of beans meets eight cups of water and eleven grams of salt in a heavy four-quart pot. The large measure and constant attendance are scaffolding; a timer and an occasional glance replace them. The cold salted start, skimming before the aromatic garnish, and covered gentle cooking are the treatment itself and must stay. Bouquet garni, a tied herb bundle, replaces the source's obsolete English label, but the herbs themselves are unchanged. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The one step that decides the pot is controlling the boil. Beans knocked about by rolling water split before their centres yield, so once the surface is skimmed, lower the heat until the liquid barely moves. Patience, not commotion.