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Salad

Cold Bean Salad

A salad of cold baked beans, onion, and a vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine salt, pepper, and mustard in a salad dish.

  2. Mix in equal parts of oil and vinegar until you have enough sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add cold baked beans and chopped onion.

  2. Stir well to combine and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mustard + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold baked beans
Provide the bulk and soft, starchy body of the salad.
Oil
Adds richness and carries flavour, coating the beans with a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the beans.
Onion
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and bite.

The step that matters

Mix in equal parts of oil and vinegar until you have enough sauce.. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own and separate quickly. Whisking or stirring vigorously temporarily breaks the oil into tiny droplets suspended in the vinegar, so the dressing coats the beans evenly instead of pooling.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, vinegar, onion):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, vinegar, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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