A tale of two beans

A few days ago, a need for dried haricot beans surfaced, something that BH usually has in the cupboard, but on this occasion the cupboard failed.

Sainsbury's had failed her too, despite being a Tier One store, so I had a quick go in Epsom, in the course of the early morning visit noticed at reference 1.

Nothing doing at Waitrose, although it was early enough for the staff to be helpful and I had two of them on the case. Maybe in a giant Waitrose, but certainly not in the Epsom one. Plenty of rice, other grains and lentils - but very little in the way of beans. They suggested trying Grape Tree across the way, the people who sell me brick dates from Cullompton. The place, as it happens, where they sold splendid dough cakes when I was fresh out of school and busy, for a short while, on the by-pass there, now the M5.

Nothing doing at Grape Tree either.

Next stop, Gemini to ask him what was going on, managing to ask about the wrong sort of bean and to misspell it. As it turned out, this did not matter a great deal as cannellini beans and haricot beans are different cultivars of the same bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, to be found at reference 2.

He pointed to the modern trend for convenience in both food and cooking. Dried beans take a lot of cooking, so demand has shifted to grains and lentils. Given that beans are cheap and supermarkets fuss about revenue per square meter of shelf space per day, beans are getting de-stocked. There is also the consideration that when harvests are bad, as they have been of late, the big canners get first dibs.

Correcting my opening question, he explains that the story will be much the same with haricot beans, a close relative of the cannellini bean. And in response to another supplementary, he explains the differences between the two from a culinary point of view: substitution will often be OK, but they are not the same.

Somewhere along the way, I learn that haricot beans, aka navy beans, are what goes into baked beans.

And that the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae, or sometimes, not quite correctly, Papillonoideae, for the shape of the flowers of the dominant sub-family) does make the cut in Zomlefer, for those of a more botanical turn of mind.

Then this morning, prompted by Gemini telling me that convenience stores are probably the way forward, I visit the Fahim Brothers of Waterloo Road, useful people whom I use for time to time for things not always to be had elsewhere - like water melons, peanuts and walnuts. They had lots of beans in tins and lots of dried beans (and other dried grains and legumes) in bags, and I was able to buy a kilo of haricot beans, aka alubia beans. From the very Natco mentioned by Gemini as a likely brand. The shop above, the beans at the top.

The word 'alubia' was not to be found in OED, Longmans, Littré or Websters. But I eventually ran it down, and it turns out to be a Spanish word for bean, borrowed from the Arabs at the time when these last lived in Spain. But not in the rather short Spanish section at the back of Websters. And that the beans in question started out in Mesoamerica some thousands of years ago, slowly moving south. And then being discovered by Columbus just a few hundred years ago. They have spread all over the world since.

Gemini had done pretty well. He did what I asked of him, and from there I was able to strike out on my own. And we now have some beans.

And while Littré did not know about alubia beans, he did know about 'haricot de mouton', which seems to be a stew made with chunks of mutton, potatoes and turnips, nothing to do with beans. While reference 9 does not seem to recognise mouton with haricots at all. Or agneau for that matter.

PS 1: more confusion. Our word legume, for the bean family, is the French word for vegetables generally. While 'haricot' is their word for beans generally. 'Haricot blanc' being their term for what we call haricot beans.

PS 2: peanuts are members.

PS 3: while all this was going on, there was also the matter of our new thermometers, noticed, for example, at the end of reference 8. I had a talk with Gemini about how the upstairs one seemed to be stuck around 80°F, and he offers a range of reasons why this might be so. Our clinker block internal walls are good insulators, and the fact that the thermometer is hung off one, may be one factor. The wall does not have time to cool down overnight, and radiates heat whatever the air in the middle of the room might be doing. 

Then, the thermometer tube might have be spot glued onto the wood base carelessly. The tube was certainly not straight, which was not a good sign, and on closer inspection the thermometer bulb is well off centre under its housing. Too far to the right, perhaps giving rise to an error of between 5 and 10°F too high.

On Gemini's suggestion, I put it in the fridge, where it went down to 40°F, consistent with an error of this order. And demonstrating that, in the round, the thing did work. So the view now is that it is pretty hot in the study, but not as hot as the thermometer makes out.

Amazon not proving very helpful, I asked Gemini about moving up-market, spending a bit more to get a better product, and he comes up with various (named) options. Not for the first time, I wondered whether he was straying onto delicate ground, favouring some brands over others. Still, Google is a big company and no doubt has plenty of lawyers on their books.

In any event, I shall look into his suggestions.

I learn along the way that -40°C equals -40°F, a fact confirmed by Bing. An elementary consequence of the fixed point theorems which I once used to know about. 

And I closed with Dr. Fahrenheit. Clearly a chap with a tidy mind.

PS 4: some time later, I am still worrying about 'haricot de mouton'

Bing turns up lots of images on that clue, most of which clearly involve beans. So clearly most French people don't know that the dish does not involve beans.

But top right, we have one which does not, from reference 10. Which claims to be the real thing, more or less what (le Petit) Littré gave a half a dozen words to. It also goes on to say '« Le haricot de mouton ne contient pas de haricots. C'est un ragoût de mouton, cuit surtout avec des navets et des oignons. L'appellation vient du vieux français «harigoter» ou «haligoter» qui signifie «couper en morceaux».»'. That is to say an old word to do with chopping things up, not beans. None of these words is to be found in Littré.

This is confirmed by no less an outfit than L'Académie Française at reference 11, give or take a bit of confusion about the potatoes. Perhaps, inter alia, the French equivalent of the OED. I wonder what Gemini would have made of all this, had I tested him? 

References.

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/big-day.html.  

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaseolus_vulgaris.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean. Lots on the toxicity of beans generally.

Reference 4: https://natcofoods.com/. An entry point more than a website. Clearly an usual company: 'We want to provide people with high quality, affordable food which enables them to eat healthy and delicious meals. / 100% of our profits are donated to charity so that we give back to the countries where our ingredients come from'.

Reference 5: https://spanishstep.com/archives/9777. Advertisement infested, but helpful on alubia.

Reference 6: https://andesharvest.com/alubia-beans-more-info. A producer-side view.

Reference 7: https://www.botanical-online.com/en/botany/beans-characteristics. Some bean history.

Reference 8: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/cheese-and-so-forth.html.

Reference 9: La cuisine familiale - Mariette, Montsouris - 1923, 1969.

Reference 10: https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_haricot-de-mouton-le-vrai_37675.aspx.

Reference 11: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9H0193.

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