Skip to main content
Main

Bacon and Beans

A simple dish of boiled beans topped with bacon and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Bacon and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Soak the bacon in cold water for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Trim and scrape the bacon clean.

  3. Place the bacon in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

Cook

  1. Set over low heat and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Boil gently for about 1 hour or until done.

  3. Remove the rind from the bacon.

Serve

  1. In a deep dish, place the boiled and strained beans.

  2. Top the beans with the bacon and garnish with parsley before serving.

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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Supplies fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans as the dish cooks.
Beans
Provide the bulk of the dish, with starch that gives body and a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Skimming off the foam. Foam that forms as the water comes to a boil carries impurities and fat from the bacon. Removing it keeps the cooking liquid clean and the flavor less greasy or bitter.

“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