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Salad

Haricot Bean Salad

A salad of boiled haricot beans with beetroot, parsley, celery, and a vinaigrette of salad oil, tarragon vinegar, and plain vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the soaked haricot beans until tender but not mashed, then let them cool.

  2. In a salad bowl, combine the beans, beetroot, parsley, celery, and any cold vegetables.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the salad oil, tarragon vinegar, plain vinegar, salt, and pepper over the mixture, then mix well.

  2. For added flavor, rub the bowl with a cut clove of garlic 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beetroot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the salad and hold their shape when cooked until tender but not mashed.
Salad oil
Coats the beans and carries flavour, giving the salad a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the beans and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender but not mashed. Beans cooked too long break down and turn mushy, while undercooked beans stay hard and chalky. Cooking them just until tender keeps their shape and gives a firm, pleasant bite in the salad.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, parsley, celery, carrot, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, parsley, celery, carrot, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. 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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