Name: Windsor Long Pods or Broad Beans
Ingredients: broad beans; coarse sea salt; boiled bacon or pickled pork; parsley; butter

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 ↓

Windsor Long Pods or Broad Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Shell the broad beans into a pan of clear water.

Cook

Boil the beans in plenty of water with dissolved coarse sea salt. Skim the water as needed.

Serve

Serve the beans under boiled bacon or pickled pork.
Garnish with boiled and minced parsley.
Serve with parsley and butter sauces.

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 + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans: Form the main body of the dish, providing starchy, tender texture when boiled.
Boiled bacon or pickled pork: Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that complements the mild beans.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the parsley sauce, giving it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.