Three Bean Salad

This dish, which combines green beans, wax beans, and kidney beans, follows a classic recipe, though many different beans can come together to make this salad. Common variants include replacing the wax or green beans with cannellini beans, garbanzo beans, black beans, or black-eyed peas. Salads using cooked beans have been common since a least the 19th century, when vinegar was used as a temporary preservative. Refrigerators were not invented for home use until 1913, so vinegar-as-preservative was a practical solution when preparing this kind of salad for occasions such as outdoor picnics.

Recipe Servings: 6