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To Boil Haricot Beans, and Serve Them with Parsley and Butter

Boiled haricot beans served with parsley, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Haricot Beans, and Serve Them with Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in cold water overnight.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the soaked beans, 3 pints of cold water, and clarified dripping.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish the beans

  1. Drain the beans in a colander and return them to a dry saucepan with the butter.

  2. Wash and finely chop the parsley.

  3. Add the chopped parsley, pepper, and salt to the beans.

  4. Heat the saucepan and stir the contents carefully for about 5 minutes.

  5. Serve the beans on a hot dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the dish's main body, providing starchy, creamy texture once cooked through.
Clarified dripping
Adds rich fat and savory flavor to the beans as they simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel when tossed with the drained beans.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green aroma and a bright herbal note.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling hard. A vigorous boil agitates the beans and can split their skins and break them up, while a gentle simmer lets them soften evenly and stay whole.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper. 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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