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Haricot Beans

A simple boiled haricot bean dish served with parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricot beans overnight or for at least 2-3 hours.

Cook

  1. Place the soaked beans in a pot with plenty of cold water, the onion, and salt.

  2. Boil the beans steadily for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the beans and transfer them to a vegetable dish.

Serve

  1. Pour parsley butter sauce over the beans before serving.

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture once softened by soaking and boiling.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the cooking water as the beans simmer.

The step that matters

Boil the beans steadily for 3 hours. Dried beans must be fully cooked to become tender and digestible. Holding a steady simmer keeps the skins from splitting and the beans from breaking apart, while the beans soften evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, butter, sauce. 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.

More haricot beans recipes

Boiled 16with Bacon 6with Onions 5White 4Boiled White 3Plain 3 See all 42 →

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