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Haricot Beans

A simple dish of boiled peas served plain or with butter, pepper, flour, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil young green peas in salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the peas.

  3. Serve plain or add butter.

  4. Return drained peas to the heat.

  5. Stir in butter, black pepper, and a dusting of flour.

  6. Add a few mint leaves while boiling to reduce flatulence.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Young green peas
Form the body of the dish; boiling softens them to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that coats the peas and carries flavour.
Flour
Lightly thickens the buttery coating on the hot peas.
Mint leaves
Add a fresh, aromatic herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Dusting the peas with flour. Flour added to hot peas and butter must be stirred in evenly, or it clumps into lumps instead of thinly coating the peas and slightly thickening the butter.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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