Haricot Bean

Common beans grow on bushy or climbing annual plants with trifoliate leaves, white or pink flowers and slim pods. Haricot beans are the dry, mature seeds of white-seeded varieties, small, smooth, oval and cream to pure white, usually six to ten millimetres long. They have a mild, slightly sweet, starchy flavour and a creamy texture when thoroughly cooked, taking on the taste of the liquids and seasonings around them. In the English-speaking world they are often called navy beans, a name linked to their use in naval rations. They are sold dried in bags, canned in sauce or brine, and sometimes as flour. Close relatives include cannellini, great northern and flageolet beans.

Phaseolus vulgaris was domesticated in the Americas, with at least two independent domestication events, one in Mesoamerica and one in the Andes of South America, thousands of years ago. After 1492, Spanish and Portuguese ships carried the beans to Europe, Africa and Asia, where they quickly became staple crops. The French word haricot is of uncertain origin; one theory links it to a Nahuatl word for the bean, ayacotl, and another to the older French term for a stew of mutton and vegetables, the two perhaps having merged. The genus name Phaseolus comes from the Latin for a small bean or pod.

Beans were one of the Three Sisters of Indigenous American farming, planted with maize and squash to support one another. When the Columbian exchange brought them to Europe in the sixteenth century, they replaced or supplemented older Old World pulses such as broad beans. Haricot beans became closely tied to French regional cooking, including cassoulet from Languedoc, where white beans are slow-cooked with sausage and confit duck, and to Italian and Spanish dishes. In Britain, tinned haricot beans in tomato sauce were introduced by American canners and grew into a national favourite from the early twentieth century, while in New England, navy beans were baked with salt pork and molasses and served on Saturdays. The name navy bean arose in the nineteenth century when the United States Navy included the beans in sailors' rations. Today the common bean is the most important grain legume for direct human consumption worldwide, grown from the Americas to East Africa and China, and white haricots remain a pantry staple.

Dried haricot beans are soaked and simmered for soups, stews, salads, purees and casseroles, and they are baked with sweet or tomato-based sauces. In France they are the classic base of cassoulet, and fresh young pods of related varieties are eaten as green beans, which in French are also called haricots verts. In Britain, beans on toast is a common quick meal. Cooked beans are mashed into spreads, fried into patties or added to chilli, and the cooking liquid is used to thicken soups.

Haricot beans are an excellent source of plant protein, fibre, folate, iron, magnesium and potassium, with a low glycaemic response relative to many starchy foods. Higher legume intake is associated in research with improved cholesterol and blood sugar control and lower cardiovascular risk, as part of an overall balanced diet. Their resistant starch and fibre feed gut bacteria. These are population-level associations rather than guaranteed individual effects, and beans are best seen as a nutritious staple rather than a medicine.