Lobio Period BOrigin theory BVerified

In Georgian, lobio means simply "beans," and the name belongs to a stewed bean dish rooted deep in the Caucasian table. Red kidney beans are simmered soft, then dressed with ground walnuts, coriander and other herbs, garlic and vinegar, or cooked down together with them. Because it uses no meat, lobio is valued as a dish for the fasting periods of the Georgian Orthodox calendar, and as home cooking it comes in countless versions from one region to the next.

The red kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) that gives today's lobio its character is a crop native to the Americas. It crossed the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus's voyages, reaching Europe only after 1492. In time the bean took root in the fields of the Caucasus as well. There it met walnuts and herbs long at home in the region, and a kitchen craft of grinding, simmering and dressing, and out of that meeting came the kidney-bean lobio of today.

Still, when the now-familiar kidney-bean version took shape is one question, and how old lobio is as a dish is another. Georgian bean cookery itself goes back far earlier than the New World bean's crossing. That distinction is the crux of the question of where this dish came from.

Lobio has long been shadowed by the view that it is a newcomer, a dish that could not exist without the New World bean. Because its most conspicuous ingredient, the red kidney bean, came from the Americas, the reasoning leaps to the conclusion that the dish itself must be young.

Follow the sources, though, and Georgian lobio turns out to have an older layer made with Old World pulses. Before the common bean arrived, the dish was made with Old World beans such as the hyacinth bean (Dolichos, or lablab), and with lentils and peas. The genre itself is old enough to predate the divisions of Georgia as a state. Into this tradition came the bean native to the Americas. It reached Europe only after 1492 and in time made its way to the Caucasus as well; by some accounts, its cultivation began in the western regions of Guria and Samegrelo. Little by little the red kidney bean displaced the older Old World pulses, and the lobio best known today became established.

The newcomer story mistakes the moment the familiar kidney-bean version took shape for the age of the dish. Georgian kitchens had long made lobio with Old World beans; then the New World bean arrived, and the beans going into the pot changed. The accepted view today is not that a new dish was born, but that an old bean dish took in a new bean.