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Beans in Sauce

Beans cooked with onion, bouquet garni, bacon, pepper, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Beans in Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook the beans

  1. Soak beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Drain beans the next morning.

  3. Place beans in a casserole or stewpan with sliced onion, bouquet garni, bacon bone, and pepper. Cover with cold water and boil until tender.

  4. Drain beans using a sieve over a basin, leaving them on the sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In another stewpan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in minced onion and fry gently until pale brown.

  2. Mix in flour until smooth. Gradually add reserved bean cooking water.

  3. Bring to a boil, tint with caramel, skim, and strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Pour sauce back into the stewpan.

Finish the beans

  1. Stir in cooked beans. Remove bouquet, onion, and bacon bone.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Dried white haricot beans
Form the body of the dish, softening during long boiling until tender.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Bean cooking water
Supplies starchy, flavorful liquid that becomes the body of the sauce.
Minced onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it fries gently to pale brown.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter and adding the liquid gradually. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps. Cooking the flour briefly in fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, butter, 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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