Name: Dry White Beans, Egbert
Ingredients: 1 quart dry white beans; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 onions, finely chopped; 3 teaspoons mustard flour; 4 tablespoons Espagnole sauce; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Nutmeg, to taste

Why it works: Beans and mustard 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 ↓

Dry White Beans, Egbert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

Cook the beans as directed in a previous recipe and drain them in a colander.

Make the mustard sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onions lightly, then drain off the butter.
Add the mustard flour diluted with the Espagnole sauce to the onions.
Stir in the cooked beans and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Cover the saucepan and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

Before serving, add a piece of butter and toss the beans until melted.

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.

Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce as they simmer.
Mustard flour: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Espagnole sauce: Supplies body and savoury depth, helping the mustard flour spread through the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky finish to the beans.
Onions: Provide sweetness and aromatic depth when sautéed lightly in butter.

The step that matters

Diluting the mustard flour in the Espagnole sauce. Mustard flour lumps easily when added dry. Mixing it smoothly into the warm Espagnole sauce first keeps the sauce even and prevents raw, grainy pockets of mustard flavour in the beans.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, mustard, flour, sauce, pepper, nutmeg):

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, mustard, flour, sauce, pepper, nutmeg. 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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Dry White Beans, Egbert