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Haricot Beans, with Tomato Sauce

A bean stew of haricot beans simmered with onion, celery, turnip, butter, pepper, salt, and thick tomato sauce, garnished with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans for 12 hours.

  2. Put the beans in a saucepan and cover with water.

Cook

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

  2. Boil slowly until the beans are soft.

  3. Remove the vegetables.

  4. Drain the beans.

Serve

  1. Pile the beans on a dish.

  2. Pour thick tomato sauce over them.

  3. 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 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 beans
Provide the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, starchy base as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the beans a smoother mouthfeel and rounded flavour.
Thick tomato sauce
Adds acidity and moisture, contrasting with the mild, creamy beans.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the beans are soft. Gentle simmering lets the bean skins and interiors soften evenly. A hard, fast boil can break the skins while the centres stay firm, and beans added to acidic liquids before they are tender may stay hard, so the cook must check for softness rather than rely on time.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, turnip, butter, pepper, tomato, sauce. 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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