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Dried Beans

A stew of dried beans cooked with celery, garlic, olive oil, and seasonings, served over stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Dried Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Soak the dried beans in water until half-boiled.

  2. Change the water and add the celery, garlic, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the olive oil and cook until the beans are done.

Serve

  1. Serve the beans over slices of stale bread.

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. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Dried beans
Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture of the stew.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and moisture as it softens during cooking.
Garlic
Contributes a pungent aroma that mellows as it cooks.
Olive oil
Adds fat for richer mouthfeel and carries flavor through the stew.
Stale bread
Soaks up the cooking liquid and gives the dish a sturdy base.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until fully done. Dried beans must be cooked through to become tender and digestible. Undercooked beans stay firm and can contain compounds that full cooking breaks down, so stopping early is the common mistake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, garlic, pepper, olive, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, garlic, pepper, olive, bread. 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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