Navy bean

The navy bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is a small, oval, ivory-white common bean — also called the haricot, pea bean or Boston bean — prized for cooking down to a dense, smooth creaminess while keeping its shape. Mild and faintly sweet, with a soft, buttery starchiness and a quiet earthy-green note, it is the workhorse white bean of the English-speaking kitchen: the bean of Boston baked beans, of the British tinned baked bean in tomato sauce, and of the United States Senate bean soup. Its name comes not from the colour of the sea but from the United States Navy, which made the cheap, storable, protein-rich bean a ration staple from the nineteenth century onward.