Name: Baked Beans
Ingredients: beans; San Juan or El Dorado olive oil; nut butter; water

Why it works: Beans and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,470 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Beans

Ingredients

beans
San Juan or El Dorado olive oil
nut butter
water

Directions

Prepare and cook the beans as directed.
Add olive oil in place of chopped olives.
To make the nut cream, rub the nut butter smooth.
Slowly add water until you reach the desired consistency.

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.

Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

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