Beans About Beans: A History

Beans’ Biographies

By Ken Albala
Review by Marty Martindale

“Beans, beans, the musical fruit.
The more you eat, the more you ‘toot.’”
(borrowed from an old children’s song)

You may be surprised to learn the above reference to fruit is not poetic license. Beans, with their high-fiber, protein-packed nutrition are actually a fruit. All beans are legumes, and legumes include beans, peas and lentils. Their structure is generally a mushy interior surrounded by a firm skin faintly seamed around the middle. Beans are famed for the flatulence they provoke, however, we understand Beano is a good thing. Each chapter concentrates on related beans, “a series of bean biographies,” states Albala.

Beans in human culture tend to be geographical markers, as well. Your reviewer once told her kids she could recall the geography of her life in beans: Near Boston “Beantown” where she grew up, every Saturday night, date night, the home meal included canned Friend’s Baked Beans, prepared with pork and molasses. The family further lavished the beans with tart, family-centric dousings of assorted condiments. Once married she moved to Texas and New Mexico where it was pinto beans in both places, and never to be eaten without sharp, grated Cheddar. A decade later living on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it was red beans and rice country, and celery was important in the cookpot. Still another decade later, it was Tampa Bay where Cuban black beans were the bean du jour. These were cooked with green bell pepper and served over rice with a garnishes of raw onion and white vinegar.

Albala also gives us practical advice: For instance, he confesses he feels it is no longer necessary to “sift through beans [before cooking] looking for debris or rocks.” He likes the idea of skimming off the foam which rises. Preference as to over-night soaking or the quick “day of” method” is ours and not too important. Both seem okay. He’s also from the school of “no seasoning, even salt, until the beans show signs of tenderness.” He adds no sure way to judge how long it takes to cook an actual bean. It apparently doesn’t exist. Like a good chowder, he feels beans taste better the following day. He does indeed, “Roll that beautiful bean footage,” throughout the book, and it pleases.

The biographies begin with ancient lentils, though he offers no recipe for Essau’s Mess of Pottage made with brown rice. To my surprise, I learned the tamarind is a bean, so is carob. Jicama and fenugreek are also fruits! These appear in his chapter, “Oddballs and Villains.”

Albala takes us totally around the world with bean biography, and he includes 55 recipes. These run from the adzuki bean, its sweetness and versatility in Japanese Bean Paste to Cuban Black Bean Soup. He also spares us not from recipes for Bean Fudge and Pinto Bean Fruit Cake. Any good bean recipe collection contains Brazil’s favorite Feijoada, so yummie served from the top of the Caesar Park overlooking Impenema on a lazy, sunny Saturday afternoon.

Humans are blessed for having the lowly bean, because it is often life-saving for the poor and hungry, and its protein-richness coupled with its low cost for mankind in any state of leanness. These caring benefactors also share their valuable nitrogen fixing properties which enriches our soil for growing other crops.

Before his scholarly 11-page bibliography, our bean biographer thoughtfully includes a full page of modern bean cookbooks. Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He is also author of many books on food including EATING RIGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE and THE BANQUET: DINING IN THE GREAT COURTS OF LATE RENAISSANCE EUROPE.

You can reach Marty at: mm@FoodSiteoftheDay.com.

Special interests: culinary couch potato, global cuisine