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Beans

Beans cooked slowly in water, then simmered with lard, crushed capsicum pods, onions or garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,695 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans overnight in water.

  2. Boil the beans slowly in soft water until tender.

Make the lard mixture

  1. In a separate pan, heat the lard.

  2. Add crushed capsicum pods and chopped onions or garlic to the lard.

Combine and simmer

  1. Simmer the cooked beans with the lard mixture for flavor.

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 + capsicumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Capsicum + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23,390 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

Haricot beans
Form the main body of the dish and become tender and creamy when cooked slowly.
Lard
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavor of the aromatics through the beans.
Crushed capsicum pods
Add heat and pungent flavor to the fat.
Onions or garlic
Add savory aroma and depth as they soften in the hot lard.

The step that matters

Boil the beans slowly until tender. Beans that boil too hard can break apart and cook unevenly, while slow simmering keeps them whole and fully softened. Soaking first shortens cooking time and helps them cook evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, capsicum):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, capsicum. 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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