Broad bean

The broad bean is a stout, upright annual with square stems, grey-green leaves and white flowers marked with a dark black blotch. It bears thick, pale green pods lined with soft, white, cottony fibre, and each holds three to eight large, flat, kidney-shaped beans.

Fresh beans are bright green and sweet with a slight bitterness in the pale skin. Dried ones are tan, brown or occasionally purple, firm and starchy, with an earthy flavour.

They are sold fresh in pods, frozen, dried, canned, split and skinned, or as flour. Small-seeded types, known as field beans or horse beans, are mainly fed to animals.

Vicia faba was domesticated in the Near East, with archaeological evidence from sites in the Levant and Galilee dating back about ten thousand years. Its wild ancestor has not been identified with certainty.

From there it spread west to the Mediterranean and Europe and east to Central Asia, India and China. It is one of the crops of the Neolithic agricultural revolution along with wheat, barley, lentils and peas.

The name faba is the classical Latin word for the bean, passing into Romance languages as fave, haba and feve, and into the English fava. Broad bean describes the wide, flat shape of the seed.

Broad beans fed ancient peoples from the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia, and they were among the main pulses of the Roman diet. They were also the main protein of medieval Europe before the arrival of New World beans, and most European bean recipes before the 16th century are of this species.

In Egypt, ful medames, slowly cooked broad beans, has been a staple breakfast for centuries, and the falafel of Egypt is made from fava rather than chickpeas. In China, doubanjiang, fermented broad bean chilli paste, is a cornerstone of Sichuan cuisine.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers record unusual taboos on beans, such as those attributed to the followers of Pythagoras, perhaps linked to favism, the condition in which some people have a serious reaction to the beans.

Today, China is the leading producer, and the bean is being promoted in Europe and Canada as a legume that can reduce reliance on imported soy for animal and human protein.

Fresh young beans are shelled and eaten raw with pecorino in Italy, or boiled and tossed into salads, risotto and pasta. Older beans are double-peeled to remove the tough skin. Dried beans are soaked and cooked into ful medames, soups and stews, or ground for falafel and bessara.

In Sichuan, broad beans are fermented into doubanjiang. Roasted whole beans are a snack in China and the Middle East.

Young shoots and flowers are used as greens in some places, and the plant is grown as a green manure and as animal feed.

Broad beans provide protein, fibre, folate, iron, magnesium and potassium, and they have a moderate effect on blood sugar. They are also a natural source of levodopa, the compound used to treat Parkinson's disease, though eating beans is not a substitute for medication and their levodopa content varies.

Population research on pulses suggests benefits for heart health, and broad beans fit into that pattern.