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Beans, Haricot, with Tomato Sauce

A bean stew of haricot beans simmered with vegetables and butter, finished with thick tomato sauce and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beans, Haricot, with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in water for 12 hours.

  2. In a saucepan, cover the soaked beans with water.

Cook

  1. Add the onion, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil slowly until the beans are soft.

  3. Remove the vegetables and drain the beans.

Serve

  1. Pile the beans on a dish and pour thick tomato sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with croutons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and starchy, filling texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the cooking liquid.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and bright, acidic flavour that contrasts with the mild beans.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the beans are soft. Beans need a long, gentle simmer so their starches gelatinise and the skins soften evenly. Rapid boiling can split the skins and leave the beans mushy on the outside and hard within.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, pepper, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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