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Haricot Beans

Haricot beans simmered with onions, sugar, butter, rice, cheese, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a pan with cold water and ½ ounce of coarse sea salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 2 hours.

Make the sauce à la Milanaise

  1. To make sauce à la Milanaise, blanch and chop the onions.

  2. In a saucepan, combine onions, sugar, butter, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Cook until soft.

  4. Boil the rice.

  5. Add the boiled rice to the onion mixture.

  6. Moisten the mixture with milk or water.

  7. Cook slowly, stirring occasionally.

  8. Once the onions are soft, stir in the grated cheese and mix well.

  9. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  10. Combine the sieved mixture with white sauce.

Serve

  1. For serving, cover the beans with tomato puree or sauce à la Milanaise.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cooked beans 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.

  1. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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, becoming tender through long soaking and simmering.
Onions
Provide sweetness and a soft base that gives the sauce its body as they cook down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the onions a smooth, silky texture.
Rice
Thickens the sauce as it is sieved, giving it a smoother, more substantial body.
White sauce
Adds creamy moisture and a smooth coating that binds the sauce to the beans.

The step that matters

Cook the onions slowly until soft. Onions cooked too fast can brown or scorch before softening, giving bitter flavour. Slow cooking lets their sugars develop gently and yields a sweet, smooth base once sieved.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, sugar, butter, rice, milk, cheese):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, sugar, butter, rice, milk, cheese. 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.

More haricot beans recipes

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