Soissons bean ✦

Haricot de Soissons

What it is

It is not the common bean at all but a runner bean, Phaseolus coccineus, sent three or four metres up poles on the Aisne floodplain. The specification effectively sells it by the ruler: pods of twenty to twenty-five centimetres, and a dried grain of at least seventeen millimetres to carry the name.

In the kitchen

Soak twelve hours and it needs barely an hour of gentle cooking, half what a lingot takes. Go past that and you have purée — excellent if you meant it, and the end of any salad if you did not.

Goes with

Butter Cream Garlic Thyme Sage Pork Parsley Bay leaf

Same species

Ayocote bean Black bean Borlotti bean Cannellini bean Coco de Paimpol Faba asturiana

In season alongside

Pumpkin Amethyst deceiver Arbutus berry Bay bolete Hind Bintje potato

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