llustration: BROAD BEAN.]

_Mode_.--This is a favourite vegetable with many persons, but to be
nice, should be young and freshly gathered. After shelling the beans,
put them into _boiling_ water, salted in the above proportion, and let
them boil rapidly until tender. Drain them well in a colander; dish, and
serve with them separately a tureen of parsley and butter. Boiled bacon
should always accompany this vegetable, but the beans should be cooked
separately. It is usually served with the beans laid round, and the
parsley and butter in a tureen. Beans also make an excellent garnish to
a ham, and when used for this purpose, if very old, should have their
skins removed.

_Time_.--Very young beans, 15 minutes; when of a moderate size, 20 to 25
minutes, or longer.

_Average cost_, unshelled, 6d. per peck.

_Sufficient_.--Allow one peck for 6 or 7 persons.

_Seasonable_ in July and August.

NUTRITIVE PROPERTIES OF THE BEAN.--The produce of beans in meal
is, like that of peas, more in proportion to the grain than in
any of the cereal grasses. A bushel of beans is supposed to
yield fourteen pounds more of flour than a bushel of oats; and a
bushel of peas eighteen pounds more, or, according to some,
twenty pounds. A thousand parts of bean flour were found by Sir
II. Davy to yield 570 parts of nutritive matter, of which 426
were mucilage or starch, 103 gluten, and 41 extract, or matter
rendered insoluble during the process.

BROAD BEANS A LA POULETTE.

1093. INGREDIENTS.--2 pints of broad beans, 1/2 pint of stock or broth,
a small bunch of savoury herbs, including parsley, a small lump of
sugar, the yolk of 1 egg, 1/4 pint of cream, pepper and salt to taste.

_Mode_.--Procure some young and freshly-gathered beans, and shell
sufficient to make 2 pints; boil them, as in the preceding recipe, until
nearly done; then drain them and put them into a stewpan, with the
stock, finely-minced herbs, and sugar. Stew the beans until perfectly
tender, and the liquor has dried away a little; then beat up the yolk of
an egg with the cream, add this to the beans, let the whole get
thoroughly hot, and when on the point of simmering, serve. Should the
beans be very large, the skin should be removed previously to boiling
them.

_Time_.--10 minutes to boil the beans, 15 minutes to stew them in the
stock.

_Average cost_, unshelled, 6d. per peck.

_Seasonable_ in July and August.

ORIGIN AND