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Bean Salad

A salad of boiled beans with onions, vinegar dressing, flour, mustard, turmeric, egg, pepper, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Measure beans.

  2. String and cut them into small pieces.

  3. Cook beans in salted water until tender.

  4. Add chopped onions and let stand for a few minutes.

  5. Drain off all the water.

Dress and seal

  1. In a separate bowl, mix vinegar, flour, mustard, turmeric, beaten egg, black pepper, butter, and sugar.

  2. Pour the dressing over the hot beans and stir thoroughly.

  3. Seal while hot.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Beans + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing as the main body of the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the salad.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it coats the beans rather than running off.
Egg
Helps bind and thicken the dressing as it cooks and sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the hot beans and stir thoroughly. Hot beans absorb the dressing better than cold ones, so stirring thoroughly while they are warm spreads the flavour evenly. Uneven coating leaves some beans bland and others sharp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, vinegar, flour, mustard, turmeric, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, vinegar, flour, mustard, turmeric, egg, pepper. 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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