Name: Carrot and Haricot Hot Pot
Ingredients: ½ pound haricot or butter beans (soaked for 24 hours); 6 carrots; other vegetables (such as greens, celery, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, and turnips); mixed herbs; spice; salt and pepper to taste; 4 pints cold water; chopped parsley (for garnish); curry powder (optional)

Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 74 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrot and Haricot Hot Pot

Ingredients

½ pound haricot or butter beans (soaked for 24 hours)
6 carrots
other vegetables (such as greens, celery, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, and turnips)
mixed herbs
spice
salt and pepper to taste
4 pints cold water
chopped parsley (for garnish)
curry powder (optional)

Directions

Boil the soaked beans in the water for 1 to 2 hours.
Cut all vegetables into small pieces and add them to the pot.
Simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.
For added flavor, stir in a little curry powder 15 minutes before serving.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

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.

Jerusalem artichoke + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together74 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot or butter beans: Provide body and starch that thicken the stew as they cook and soften.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and a tender texture as they simmer.
Other vegetables: Add bulk, flavor and texture to the stew as they soften.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, celery, jerusalem artichoke, turnip, pepper, parsley):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Kalefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, celery, jerusalem artichoke, turnip, pepper, parsley. 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.