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Pickled Beans

Pickled beans preserved in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, and spices, then sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. String and wash the young beans.

  2. Make a brine with enough coarse sea salt and water to float an egg.

  3. Soak the beans in the brine until they change color.

  4. Wash the beans in clear water.

Scald in vinegar

  1. Line the bottom of a kettle with green cabbage leaves.

  2. Add the beans to the kettle.

  3. Cover the beans with vinegar and water.

  4. Place cabbage leaves on top.

  5. Heat over a slow fire until scalding hot.

  6. Remove the beans from the kettle.

  7. Let them drain.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the beans into jars with allspice, cloves, mustard seed, and scraped horseradish.

  2. Cover the jars with vinegar.

  3. Seal the jars tightly.

  4. Store in a cool, dry place.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Young beans
Form the main body of the pickle and take up the brine and vinegar flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the beans and seasons them during the brine soak.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Scraped horseradish
Adds pungent, sharp heat that stands out in the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Soak the beans in the brine until they change color. Salt draws water out of the beans and firms their texture. Stopping too early leaves them soft and under-seasoned, while the color change shows the brine has done its work.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cabbage, allspice, clove, mustard, horseradish):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cabbage, allspice, clove, mustard, horseradish. 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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