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Spanish Beans

A bean stew with salt pork, chili powder, tomato juice, molasses, browned onion, and French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spanish Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the Bayou beans overnight in water.

  2. Drain and boil the beans in fresh water with a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Drain again and cover with fresh water.

Cook

  1. Add the salt pork and cook until tender.

  2. When nearly done, add the chili powder, boiling tomato juice, molasses, browned onion, and French mustard.

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 + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Bayou beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy as they cook.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the beans.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color while balancing the sharpness of the tomato.
Tomato juice
Provides acidity and liquid that flavors and moistens the beans.
Browned onion
Contributes sweetness and savory depth from caramelized onion flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato juice near the end. Acid from tomato can slow softening of beans' skins if added too early, so adding it once the beans are nearly done helps them stay tender.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, molasses, onion, butter, mustard):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, molasses, onion, butter, mustard. 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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