What do you call these vegetables? I never knew of them as anything other than string beans until I was in college. The first time someone mentioned green beans in my hearing I had no idea what she was talking about. Favas maybe? Now I find that if you search for "string beans" on the USDA nutrition site, you find nothing, not even string beans: see green beans, or something like that.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
String or Green?
What do you call these vegetables? I never knew of them as anything other than string beans until I was in college. The first time someone mentioned green beans in my hearing I had no idea what she was talking about. Favas maybe? Now I find that if you search for "string beans" on the USDA nutrition site, you find nothing, not even string beans: see green beans, or something like that.
Ha! Wait until you see these really long ones. I call them "superstring beans", which is a semi-internal joke.
ReplyDelete-cvj
Those are string beans, lady!!
ReplyDeleteIn the days of my callow youth, a string bean actually had a string the length of the bean, which wasn't quite edible. New varieties were engineered and sometimes called "stringless beans." The term "green beans" was introduced as a euphemism.
ReplyDeleteHere's a new complication--an early twentieth century cookbook from Wisconsin calls the "green string beans" (German National Cookery for American Kitchens by Henriette Davidis. Milwaukee: Caspar and Co. 1904).
ReplyDeleteIn our own time, the string/green isogloss seems to separate the northeast from the rest of the country. Are all you string-people from hereabouts originally?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think they are called French beans.
sdj
sushma,
ReplyDeleteYes, I should have added that they are also called French beans. In the US, this term is mostly used to distinguish the thinner beans from the garden variety beans.