Cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked stew originating in southern France (Cassoulet é um ensopado rico e cozido lentamente, originário do sul da Fran?a)

Cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked stew originating in southern France.

The food writer Elizabeth David described it as that sumptuous amalgamation of haricot beans, sausage, pork, mutton and preserved goose, aromatically spiced with garlic and herbs.

Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer.

In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalization of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.

Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day.

In the 1930s she studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Italy, where their boat was confiscated.

They reached Greece, where they were nearly trapped by the German invasion in 1941, but escaped to Egypt, where they parted.

She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo.

While there she married, but she and her husband separated soon after and subsequently divorced.

The navy bean, haricot bean, pearl haricot bean, Boston bean, white pea bean, or pea bean is a variety of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) native to the Americas, where it was first domesticated.

It is a dry white bean that is smaller than many other types of white beans, and has an oval, slightly flattened shape.

It features in such dishes as baked beans, various soups such as Senate bean soup, and bean pies.

The plants that produce navy beans may be either of the bush type or vining type, depending on the cultivar.

Lamb and mutton

Sheep meat is one of the most common meats around the world, taken from the domestic sheep, Ovis aries, and generally divided into lamb, from sheep in their first year, hogget, from sheep in their second, and mutton, from older sheep.

Generally, hogget and sheep meat are not used by consumers outside Norway, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, and Australia.

Hogget has become more common in England, particularly in the North (Lancashire and Yorkshire) often in association with rare breed and organic farming.

In South Asian and Caribbean cuisine, mutton often means goat meat.

At various times and places, mutton or goat mutton has occasionally been used to mean goat meat.

Lamb is the most expensive of the three types, and in recent decades, sheep meat has increasingly only been retailed as lamb, sometimes stretching the accepted distinctions given above.

The stronger-tasting mutton is now difficult to find in many areas, despite the efforts of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign in the UK.

In Australia, the term prime lamb is often used to refer to lambs raised for meat.

Other languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, make similar or even more detailed distinctions among sheep meats by age and sometimes by sex and diet—for example, lechazo in Spanish refers to meat from milk-fed (unweaned) lambs.

It originated in the town of Castelnaudary in the Aude department in the Occitanie region.

Variants of the dish are local to other towns and cities in the Aude.

Castelnaudary is a commune in the Aude department in the Occitanie region of southern France.

It is located in the former province of the Lauragais and famous for cassoulet of which it claims to be the world capital, and of which it is a major producer.

Occitania is the southernmost administrative region of metropolitan France excluding Corsica, created on 1 January 2016 from the former regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées.

The Council of State approved Occitania as the new name of the region on 28 September 2016, coming into effect on 30 September 2016.

History and etymology

According to tradition, cassoulet was invented in 1355 in the town of Castelnaudary, under siege by the English during the Hundred Years' War.

In medieval times the dish was referred to as an espresso.

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie fran?aise dates the term cassoulet to no earlier than the 19th century.

The current name is a diminutive of the Languedoc cassolo – a cooking pot – according to the Dictionnaire de l'Académie fran?aise; Elizabeth David states that it comes from Cassol d'Issel, the original clay baking pot made in the small town of Issel, near Castelnaudary.

In cassoulets, the haricot bean is now always the main ingredient.

In the medieval period, broad beans (favolles), fresh or dried, were used in stews of the cassoulet type.

Sources differ on when haricots were first used instead of favolles: the Oxford Companion to Food states that haricots arrived in France via Spain from the New World in the 16th century; according to Larousse Gastronomique they were not used in France until the 19th century.

The Oxford Companion to Food is an encyclopedia about food.

It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999.

It was also issued in softcover under the name The Penguin Companion to Food. The second and third editions were edited by Tom Jaine and published by Oxford in 2006 and 2014.

The book, Davidson's magnum opus with more than a million words, mostly his own, covers the nature and history of foodstuffs worldwide, starting from aardvark and ending with zuppa inglese.

It is compiled with especially strong coverage of European and in particular British cookery and contains no recipes.

It was an outgrowth of the annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

Method

Traditionally, the dish is cooked in an earthenware pot, which Jane Grigson notes is correctly called a cassole or toupin; she adds that any earthenware or stoneware casserole will do, provided it is deep and wide.

The authors of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child, write, The composition of a cassoulet is, in typical French fashion, the subject of infinite dispute arguments about what should go into this famous dish seem based on local traditions.

Although haricot beans are common to all varieties, the meats vary considerably.

The Michelin Guide comments that every town brings its own personal touch to the recipe, all claiming the title of the one and only stronghold of authentic cassoulet.

Beck, Bertholle and Child comment that regardless of local custom, an extremely good cassoulet can be made anywhere out of beans with whatever traditional meats are available: goose, game, pork, sausages, lamb, mutton.

To this list, David adds turkey legs or wings, and Grigson adds partridges.

A partridge is a medium-sized galliform bird in any of several genera, with a wide native distribution throughout parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Several species have been introduced to the Americas.

They are sometimes grouped in the Perdicinae subfamily of the Phasianidae (pheasants, quail, etc.).

However, molecular research suggests that partridges are not a distinct taxon within the family Phasianidae, but that some species are closer to the pheasants, while others are closer to the jungle fowl.

In 1996, the Etats généraux de la gastronomie traditionnelle fran?aise, a professional body dedicated to promoting regional products and traditional cuisine, specified the following proportions for cassoulet: at least 30 per cent pork (which can include sausage and Toulouse sausage), mutton or preserved goose; and up to 70 percent haricot beans and stock, fresh pork rind, herbs and flavorings.

The editor of the original Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagné, divided the main varieties of cassoulet into the Trinity, according to the meats used, the Father being the cassoulet from Castelnaudary, the Son the cassoulet from Carcassonne and the Holy Ghost that from Toulouse.

Prosper Montagné (14 November 1865 – 22 April 1948) was one of the most renowned French chefs of the Belle époque and author of many books and articles on food, cooking, and gastronomy, notably Larousse Gastronomique (1938), an encyclopedic dictionary of the French culinary arts.

While Montagné was once as famous as his friend Auguste Escoffier, and was one of the most influential French chefs of the early twentieth century, his fame has faded somewhat.

In the 1920s, Montagné, Escoffier, and Philéas Gilbert—their close friend and collaborator, and an acclaimed chef and writer in his own right—were the French chefs and culinary writers esteemed above others by many French journalists and writers.

After Montagné's death, the chef and author Alfred Guérot's description of the troika as the celebrated contemporary culinary trinity: Auguste Escoffier, the father; Philéas Gilbert, the son; Prosper Montagné, the spirit reflects the reverence in which all three were held by the French culinary community.

The Castelnaudary cassoulet contains pork (loin, ham, leg, sausages and fresh rind) and in some recipes preserved goose.

The Carcassonne version uses leg of mutton and, when in season, partridge. The Toulouse cassoulet uses smaller quantities of the same meats used in Castelnaudary but adds Toulouse sausage and mutton and also duck or goose, according to?Larousse, or partridge, according to Grigson.

Other variants include the Montaubon cassoulet, spiced with tomato purée; the food historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat observes that it would be sacrilege to make cassoulet in Corbières without lightly salted pig's tail and ears; and Larousse records a fish cassoulet, made with salt code replacing the duck or goose.

Montauban-de-Picardie is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France.

Its inhabitants are called Montalbanais in French.

Common to most recipes for cassoulet is a sprinkling of breadcrumbs, to form a crust on the surface of the dish.

Although recipes have been published for haute cuisine versions of cassoulet in which roast meats are mixed with beans that have been simmered separately with aromatic vegetables, Beck, Bertholle and Child comment that cassoulet is not a kind of rare ambrosia but rather nourishing country fare.

David calls it a sumptuous amalgamation of haricot beans, sausage, pork, mutton and preserved goose, aromatically spiced with garlic and herbs.

In the process of preparing the dish, it is traditional to deglaze the pot from the previous cassoulet to give a base for the next one.

Deglazing is a cooking technique for removing and dissolving browned food residue from a pan to flavor sauces, soups, and gravy.

This has led to stories, such as the one given by David, citing Anatole France, of a single original cassoulet being extended for years or even decades.

La grande confrérie

In 1970,?La Grande confrérie du cassoulet de Castelnaudary?– The Grand Brotherhood of the Cassoulet of Castelnaudary – was established to increase the prestige and spread and defend the traditions and quality of cassoulet.

Together with the town council and other bodies, the confrérie set up the Fête du Cassoulet in 2000, a three-day annual festival celebrating cassoulet, offering tastings along with free concerts, a flower parade and other attraction.