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Stewed Beans

Stewed beans simmered with salt and peanut cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Stewed Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In the morning, place the soaked beans in a pot with cold water.

  3. Cook gently until the beans are perfectly tender.

Season and finish

  1. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of peanut cream for each pint of cooked beans.

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 + peanuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Peanut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. 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

Small white navy beans
Provides the main body and starchy bulk that the stew is built on.
Peanut cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a creamy, savoury body.

The step that matters

Cook gently until perfectly tender. A gentle simmer lets the beans cook evenly and keeps their skins intact. Vigorous boiling can split the skins and break the beans apart, leaving them mushy and uneven.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, cream):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, cream. 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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