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Kidney Beans with Brown Sauce

A hearty stew of kidney beans simmered with soup meat, brown butter sauce, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kidney Beans with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Place the kidney beans in a saucepan with the soup meat and cover with boiling water.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes, then add 1 teaspoon of salt and continue boiling until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter until very brown, then add the flour and brown it again.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of the water used to boil the beans, mixing continuously until it boils and becomes smooth.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Drain the beans and add them to the sauce, then simmer for 10 minutes 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Kidney beans + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Become tender and add body and substance to the finished sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning that gives the sauce its colour and nutty flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce once stirred into the browned butter.
Soup meat
Flavours the bean cooking water that becomes the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the butter and flour together until deeply brown develops colour and roasted flavour, but it can scorch quickly. Stirring constantly keeps the roux even, and the flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste before liquid is added.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, onion, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, onion, flour. 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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