This dish needs careful planning and preparation. It is not cheap. The ideal time to choose for it, is when you are able to have a goose: keep the legs to one side, turn them over daily in a mixture of 2 oz. unadulterated salt and a small pinch of saltpetre. Invite your guests and assemble the other ingredients.

Good beans are worth an effort. Most grocers sell dried white haricot beans vaguely described as Foreign. Better quality and a creamier texture are to be found in Soho, where grocers import beans from France, varieties known as Soissons and Arpajon from the market-gardening centres near Paris where they were first developed. Like geese, dried beans are at their best in the autumn; with time they become drier and harder and harder and drier, so beware the grocer with a slow turnover.

The other main requirement is a deep wide earthenware pot in which all the ingredients are finally amalgamated. Correctly a cassole or toupin, any earthenware or stoneware casserole will do, provided it is deep and wide.

BEANS

1 lb. haricot beans

A good-sized piece of pork or bacon skin, cut into squares

Knuckle of pork

1 lb. salt belly of pork

Large onion stuck with four cloves

1 carrot

4 cloves garlic

Bouquet garni

PORK AND GOOSE, OR MUTTON RAGOÛT

1 lb. boned shoulder of pork

1½ –2 lb. preserved goose (confits d’oie), or duck, or either made up to weight with boned loin or shoulder of mutton

3 large onions, chopped

6 cloves of garlic, or according to taste

Bouquet garni, salt and ground black pepper

4 large skinned tomatoes, 3 tablespoons tomato extract

Beef stock

Goose or duck fat, or lard

SAUSAGES

1 lb. Toulouse sausages, or saucisses de Campagne, or a large 1 lb. boiling sausage of the all-meat cervelas type, or the pork boiling rings sold in delicatessen shops

1 lb. saucisson à l’ail

PLUS

Plenty of white breadcrumbs to form a top crust

Soak the haricot beans overnight. Drain and put them in an earthenware pot with the other ingredients; cover with water. Bring to the boil, and cook in a gentle oven for an hour and a half, or until the beans are tender but not splitting.

Meanwhile prepare the pork and goose ragoût. Put the chopped onions on to melt to a golden hash in a large frying pan (preferably cast iron). Cut the various meats into eating-sized pieces, or joints, and add them to the onions. Turn up the heat a little so that they can brown, without burning. Pour off any surplus fat, then add the tomatoes skinned and chopped into large chunks, and a little stock, about quarter of a pint, to make enough sauce for the meat to continue cooking in. Flavour with concentrated tomato extract and seasonings, push the bouquet garni into the middle. Cover the pan, and keep the contents at a gentle bubble until the beans are ready–about half an hour.

Add the large saucisson à l’ail and the cervelas to the beans, so that they have half an hour’s simmering. If you are using sausages, stiffen them in a little goose fat or lard for ten minutes.

When the beans are cooked, drain off and keep the liquid; remove the onion, carrot, bouquet garni, and knuckle bone, and slice the salt pork and knuckle meat. Use the bacon skins, or pork skins, to line the deep earthenware pot you intend to use for the final cooking. Put in half the beans, then the pork and goose ragoût, the sliced meats from the bean cooking pot, the small and large sausages, and the rest of the beans. Pour over ¼ of a pint of the bean liquid, and finish with a half inch layer of breadcrumbs dotted with pieces of goose fat or lard.

Cook very slowly, about 320°F., Mark 2, for 1½ hours. The crust will turn a beautiful golden colour, and traditionally you should push it down with a spoon three to seven times, so that it can re-form with the aid of another sprinkling of breadcrumbs.

The point of this last cooking is to blend all the delicious flavours together gently, without the meat becoming tasteless and stringy. Everything has, after all, already been cooked. If you find that the cassoulet is becoming too dry, add a little more of the bean liquid, but don’t overdo this.

The quantities can be varied, the essentials are beans, sausages, pork and goose (or goose and mutton, or a small roasting duck). Pork and beans alone are very good (see below, and recipes for Boston baked beans, etc.), but it is the goose or duck that makes the difference.

This is an ideal dish for a winter’s Sunday lunch-party–it pleases everybody from children to grandparents. The cook should be pleased too, because her guests should not be allowed to eat too much beforehand, and can’t eat much afterwards, so her labours are cut to a minimum.

Cassoulet au Beurre de Gascogne

Here is a simple family version of cassoulet. An excellent filler on a cold day, which can be prepared after breakfast—if you omit the sausage, or use small ones—and left to look after itself until half an hour before lunch.

1 lb. haricot beans

1 lb. piece of petit salé, uncooked, or brine-pickled pork belly

1 large French sausage of the boiling type, or small smoked sausages

Pieces of fresh pork skin

Beurre de Gascogne

8 cloves of garlic

3 oz. lard, goose, duck or chicken fat

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Soak the beans overnight.

Next day line the casserole with the fresh pork skin, outside down, and put the piece of pork on top. If you use petit salé, make sure that the salt is washed off first. Pack in the beans around and on top. Just cover with water, and put on a close-fitting lid. Give it three hours in a slow oven, Mark 2, 320°F. Add no salt at this stage.

If you use a large sausage, add it one hour before the end of cooking time. If you use small sausages, add them half an hour before. Taste the cassoulet whilst you do this and add salt, pepper, etc. Make the beurre de Gascogne by blanching the cloves of garlic in salted boiling water for five to ten minutes. Pound them to a paste adding the 3 oz. of fat and finally the parsley.

Just before serving, strain off the liquid from the beans and pork, taste again and adjust the seasoning. Mix in the beurre de Gascogne at the last moment before serving.

NOTE: If you have no pure fat, or dripping, use olive oil or butter.

Potée

BASIC METHOD

Potée is basically a cabbage soup, in the way that cassoulet is basically beans and pork. But the addition of other vegetables as well as sausages and pickled meat makes it a complete meal in one pot, again like cassoulet. In the south-west of France, this thick soup is called garbure and contains, inevitably, confits d’oie. Country housewives use what they have to hand in their own kitchens and attic store, so the ingredients vary; but here is a suggested list and basic method:

1 good crisp savoy cabbage

3 leeks, sliced

12 new carrots, or 4 old ones cut in pieces

6 medium sized potatoes

4 small onions

Green beans and peas, if in season

1 lb. salt belly of pork, or green streaky bacon in a piece

Toulouse or Country sausages, or dried or smoked sausages

A piece of garlic sausage, or boiling sausage (saucisson à l’ail)

Large piece of pork skin

Cut the cabbage into quarters, plunge it into boiling water to blanch for 10 minutes. Leave it to drain.

Put the pork or bacon and pork skin in a pot and cover with water. Don’t add salt. Simmer for half an hour.

Add the potatoes, carrots and onions, and any other root vegetables you want to use. Simmer for half an hour. Add the garlic sausage, peas and beans—and the smoked or dried sausages if you are using them. Simmer for half an hour.

Meanwhile slice up the blanched cabbage, stiffen the fresh sausages for ten minutes in lard or butter, and add them to the potée five minutes before serving. Remove the piece of salt pork, so that it can be sliced too, then returned to the pot. Taste, and correct seasoning.

One French custom is to add thick slices of wholemeal bread just before serving the soup, but it is usually best to leave people to do this for themselves in case they are watching their weight. A more popular tradition is the addition of a glass of red or white wine to the last few spoonsful of soup in one’s plate–this is known as a goudale in the Béarm, where much garbure (see below) is consumed.

Potée: economical recipe

Use a large piece of pork skin, omit the pork, and stuff some of the larger leaves of the cabbage with half breadcrumbs, half minced pork, ham or bacon, bound with egg. Tie each stuffed leaf into a little package with some tape and add with other green vegetables half an hour before the end of the cooking time (see above). Remember that even a very small piece of smoked sausage gives a good flavour.

Garbure

Follow the recipe for Potée, above, but add some confits d’oie (or the remains of roast goose or duck) and a litde goose fat, when you put in the garlic sausage.

In deepest winter, instead of green vegetables, add half a pound of haricot beans, which have been soaked overnight, cooked and drained (see Cassoulet,). Even a tinned red pepper or two make a difference, or try half a pound of chestnuts, shelled and roasted. All these things need to be added half an hour before the end of cooking time, but don’t try them all together–or rather don’t use beans and chestnuts together.

Sieve a few pieces of root vegetable, or haricot beans, if you like the liquid itself thickened.

NOTE: Once you have blanched the cabbage, you may find it more convenient to pack all the ingredients into a huge pot, cover them with fresh water and leave in a slow oven for three hours. But if you have the time, the basic method is more popular, most people preferring cabbage to be slightly crisp–al dente, like spaghetti or rice–rather than a mush.

See also Frankfurter and choucroute soup, and the chapter following on salt pork for petit salé. Recipes for making the sausages required are given earlier in this chapter.