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Kidney Bean Salad

A salad of kidney beans, celery, sweet pickles, and onion dressed with a vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg, and flour mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Kidney Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine kidney beans, celery, sweet pickles, and Spanish onion.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix vinegar, sugar, salt, dry mustard, beaten egg, and flour.

Make the dressing

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it thickens.

  2. If the dressing is too thick, thin it with sweet cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the bean mixture and serve.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a firm, hearty texture.
Egg
Thickens the cooked dressing as it sets with gentle heat.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it coats the beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing in a double boiler. Egg and flour thicken as they heat, but egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler lets the dressing thicken smoothly.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg, flour):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg, flour. 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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