Skip to main content
Main

Dry White Beans, Breton Ne

A Breton-style stew of dry white beans cooked with onions, butter, vinegar, Espagnole sauce, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dry White Beans, Breton Ne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cook the beans as directed in a previous recipe.

  2. Drain the beans in a colander.

Cook the onions and sauce

  1. In a saucepan, fry the onions in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the vinegar and reduce the mixture by one-third.

  3. Stir in a few spoonfuls of Espagnole sauce and the cooked beans.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry white beans
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, creamy texture when cooked.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth that flavors the whole dish.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the onions brown richly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its sweetness.
Espagnole sauce
Contributes body and concentrated savory flavor to the beans.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture by one-third. Reducing concentrates the vinegar and onion flavors and thickens the liquid. Reducing too little leaves the dish thin and sharp, while reducing too far can make it overly salty or sticky once the sauce and beans are added.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper. 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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes