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Haricot Beans

A simple stewed bean dish with optional bacon or butter and tomato sauce.

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 ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beans and steep them in cold water for a few hours.

Cook

  1. Stew the beans gently in water or stock, adding butter or bacon, for about 2 hours.

  2. When tender, drain and season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve plain or with tomato sauce poured over.

  2. If the beans are skinned before cooking, mash them with butter or cream to moisten.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beans + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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, and slow cooking turns their starch into a tender texture.
Bacon or butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the beans as they stew.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and a tangy flavour contrast to the mild beans.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Gentle heat softens the bean starch and skins evenly. Vigorous boiling can split the skins and break the beans apart, leaving them mushy and uneven.

“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.

More haricot beans recipes

Boiled 16with Bacon 6with Onions 5White 4Boiled White 3Plain 3 See all 42 →

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