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Haricot Beans

A simple bean dish simmered with onions, dripping, salt, pepper, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain and simmer the beans in fresh water with salt until tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the dripping and fry the sliced onions for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the cooked haricot beans to the pan, season with salt and black pepper, and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot, optionally garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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
Provide the main body and starch that become tender when simmered and then golden when fried.
Dripping
Adds fat for frying, carrying flavour and helping the beans brown in the pan.
Onions
Soften and sweeten in the hot fat, adding savoury flavour to the beans.

The step that matters

Simmer the beans until fully tender. Dried beans must be cooked long enough for their starch to fully gelatinise and the skins to soften. If they are undercooked, they stay firm and grainy, and salt added too early can slow softening, so the beans can remain tough.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, 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.

More haricot beans recipes

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