Cassoulet

As a paella is all about the rice, a cassoulet is all about the beans. Like paella, cassoulet is named for what it is cooked in, a cassole, or casserole dish—specifically, one that’s narrow at the base but broad at the top, allowing for a large surface area, relative to its volume, for maximum surface browning. And like paella, cassoulet spawns heated debate over what is vrai and what is faux. Much wind has been blown with regard to whether or not to top the dish with bread crumbs. And how many times should that crust be broken during its cooking—seven? Or is it eight? Early writers about the dish advocate including mutton. Others would sooner put chorizo in their paella than they would mutton in a cassoulet. I have been unable to find a brotherhood of the paella that is similar to the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet; their members place the birth of cassoulet somewhere around the time of the Hundred Years’ War in the town of Castelnaudary in southern France. But even if you go back that far, to the fourteenth century, it’s hard to imagine that no one had previously combined beans and meat, which is what a cassoulet is at its core.