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Beans Spanish

A bean dish with pink beans, red peppers, lard, bacon, green pepper, garlic, salt, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beans Spanish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans and peppers

  1. Soak the pink beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

  3. Boil the red peppers until soft.

  4. Rub the boiled peppers through a fine sieve.

Cook the beans

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan.

  2. Add the bacon or salt pork; fry until slightly brown.

  3. Add the pepper sauce and chopped green pepper to the pan.

  4. Stir in the finely chopped garlic.

  5. Add the beans and their juice.

  6. Season with salt and grated cheese; cook until well flavored.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 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

Pink beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the flavors of the sauce.
Red peppers
Make the sauce, giving color, body and sweet pepper flavor once rubbed smooth.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries flavor and helps brown the bacon and aromatics.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds savory, smoky fat and salt that flavors the pan and the beans.
Garlic
Adds sharp aroma that mellows and deepens as it cooks in the fat.
Grated california cheese
Adds salty, savory richness to season the finished beans.

The step that matters

Rub the boiled peppers through a fine sieve. Skins and seeds left in the purée stay gritty and bitter, so a fine sieve gives a smooth sauce with even colour and flavor.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, pork, garlic, cheese):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, pork, garlic, cheese. 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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