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Bean Pickles

A preserved bean dish made by boiling beans, seasoning with cayenne, mustard seeds, horseradish, and covering with cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil fresh young beans in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and let them cool.

Pack the jars

  1. Fill jars with the cooled beans.

  2. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper or add a pod or two.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon each of mustard seeds and chopped horseradish.

  4. Cover the beans with cold vinegar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Beans + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Fresh young beans
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the vinegar flavour.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Mustard seeds
Add a pungent, slightly bitter aroma and flavour that develops in the vinegar.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle stands.

The step that matters

Let the beans cool before packing. Beans packed while still hot can soften further and cook the vinegar-based brine unevenly. Cooling them first keeps their texture firmer and helps the vinegar cover them evenly in the jars.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar):

  1. Lentilsfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar. 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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