Why it works: Kidney beans and corn work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Red Kidney Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beans
Soak the beans in cold water for 12 hours.
Drain the water and pick out all split beans and those with ruptured skins.
Make the syrup
In a kettle, combine 3 lbs of salt with 10 cups of water and bring to a boil.
Mix the remaining water with the corn starch and add to the boiling salt solution, stirring vigorously, then bring the mixture to a full boil.
Fill and process
Fill cans about seven-eighths full with the beans and pour in the hot syrup.
Process No. 2 cans for 2.5 hours at 212°F (100°C) or 75 minutes at 240°F (115°C).
Process No. 3 cans for 3 hours at 212°F (100°C) or 90 minutes at 240°F (115°C).
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.
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Kidney beans + corntop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together192 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Red kidney beans
- Form the solid contents of the can and hold their shape through long heat processing.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the salt solution into a syrup that fills the gaps between the beans.
The step that matters
Mixing the corn starch with the remaining water before adding it. Starch dropped dry into hot liquid clumps and thickens unevenly. Mixing it into cold water first spreads the granules, so they swell smoothly as the syrup heats. Stirring vigorously keeps the starch dispersed while it thickens.
“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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