Name: Bean Broth
Ingredients: 1 cup beans; water; 1 tablespoon cream; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Beans and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,341 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Bean Broth

Ingredients

1 cup beans
water
1 tablespoon cream
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Wash the beans and place them in a pot with plenty of water.
Cook slowly, replenishing with hot water as needed, until tender.
Drain off the broth, leaving about 1 cup.
Season the broth with cream and salt, then serve hot.

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 + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,341 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 starch that give the broth its substance and flavor.
Cream: Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the broth.

“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.