baked beans

[eloise_herisson]

Rita:

> > I'm so old that I still call haricot beans 'string beans' even 
tho'
> > their name has been changed to 'green beans'.

David:
> I meant to comment at the time but there wasn't time.
> 
> I'm puzzled over usage of 'haricot beans'.  Image Googling gives 
> this British site:
> http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/cgi-
local/frameset/detail/101432.html
> which corresponds to my expectations; and this Russian site:
> http://www.gavrish.ru/products/haricotbeans_en.html
> which looks like what Rita describes but not at all like haricot 
> beans as I know them.
> 
> So what's American usage?  Are they pale and round or long and 
green?

~Eloise:

Chiming in late here, having missed a Brit food discussion...

I think that they're basically the same thing at a different stage of 
maturity. Or at least, closely related, like sugar snaps and peas. 
Young ones ('haricots verts')or string beans are a kind of young, 
thin French bean, eaten whole, whereas British 'haricot beans' are 
the mature beans, shelled. Just like if you leave your runner beans 
for too long without harvesting them, the beans inside grow large and 
hard.

I'm willing to be proved wrong on this.

> 
> Finally, I know Boston baked beans as a specific recipe that uses 
> baked beans and the other ingredients Rita mentioned.

Yep. I think of Boston Baked beans as something home made, rather 
than baked beans in a tin.


~Eloise
whose children are getting jacket potatoes (with skins) and baked 
beans (from a tin) tonight.