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Black Beans and Rice II

A hearty dish of black beans simmered with onions, peppers, garlic, cumin, oregano, and rum, served over rice.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and banana share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 95 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Time20 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Sauté the base

  1. Spray a large heavy saucepan with cooking spray and heat over medium‑low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, for about 3 minutes.

  3. Add the diced peppers and minced garlic and sauté for 3 more minutes.

  4. Add the ground cumin and dried oregano and cook briefly, stirring.

Cook the beans

  1. Add the cooked black beans and simmer for 8 minutes, adding water if it gets too dry and starts to stick.

  2. Take 1 cup of the bean mixture, mix with the rum, and mash into a paste with a fork or in a blender or food processor.

  3. Add the paste back into the pot, cover, and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve over cooked rice.

  2. Offer onion and sour cream, each served in its own small dish, as condiments.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beans + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Beans + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,711 recipes

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

  5. Beans + cumintop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,188 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Black beans
Provide the main body and protein-rich texture of the dish, and the mashed portion thickens the sauce.
Sweet peppers
Add sweetness and a fresh, slightly crisp vegetable base when sautéed with the onion.
Onion
Builds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens in the pan.
Rice
Serves as the neutral starch base that soaks up the bean mixture.
Dark rum or dry sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a subtle sweetness to the mashed bean paste.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture and acidity that brighten the bean mixture.

The step that matters

Mashing the bean paste. Mashing only one cup and returning it to the pot thickens the mixture while leaving whole beans for texture. Mashing too much makes the dish pasty, and too little leaves it watery.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, garlic, beans, lemon, orange, tomato, cumin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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