Name: Bacon and Beans
Ingredients: 2 pounds good tender bacon; cold water; 1 quart shelled broad beans; bread crumbs; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Bacon and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

Place the bacon in a pan and cover it with cold water.
Bring to a boil and then add the broad beans.
Cook until the beans are tender.

Finish and serve

Remove the skin from the bacon and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.
Serve the bacon with the beans underneath and garnish with fried parsley.

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.

Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together332 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon: Supplies the main meat and fat that flavours the cooking water and the dish.
Broad beans: Form the vegetable base that cooks until tender beneath the bacon.
Bread crumbs: Sprinkled on top to add a light crisp, dry texture against the meat.