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Beans and Tomatoes

A simple dish of haricot beans simmered in a tomato sauce thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beans and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the haricot beans until tender.

  2. Strain the water from the beans.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the reserved water with flour and butter.

  2. Add the tomato sauce or cooked tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the sauce over the beans and serve.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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

Haricot beans
Form the main body of the dish once cooked until tender.
Flour
Thickens the reserved bean water into a sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the thickened sauce.
Tomato sauce or cooked tomatoes
Provides the tomato flavour and moisture for the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the reserved water with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid long enough to swell and set the sauce; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce that does not hold to the beans.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, flour, butter. 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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