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Kidney Beans with Meat

A simple stew of kidney beans, diced meat, and brown sauce served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and kidney beans work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Kidney Beans with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the diced meat, kidney beans, and brown sauce.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until warmed through.

  3. Serve the hot mixture on slices of toast.

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. Meat + kidney beanstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  3. Kidney beans + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Diced meat
Provides the main savoury, protein-rich body of the dish.
Kidney beans
Add bulk and a soft, starchy texture that soaks up the sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, binding the meat and beans together.
Toast
Gives a crisp, absorbent base that holds the hot mixture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture over medium heat until warmed through. Gentle heat warms the meat and beans evenly without drying the sauce or scorching it on the pot bottom. Stirring helps heat the centre of the mixture fully before serving.

Swap the kidney beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce. 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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