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Windsor or Horse Beans

A simple bean dish simmered with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Windsor or Horse Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Shell the beans and place them in a pan.

  2. Pour boiling water over the beans, cover, and let them stand in a warm place for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the water and remove the thick brown skin from the beans.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the beans in a saucepan with a little water and boil until soft.

  2. Drain the beans and season with butter, pepper, and salt.

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

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

  2. Horse + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Horse + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Horse beans
Provide the main body and starchy, soft texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the beans with a smooth flavour.

The step that matters

Removing the thick brown skin. Beans are soaked and then the tough outer skin is removed before boiling. Leaving it on keeps the texture tough and chewy, so the beans do not soften evenly when cooked.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, butter, 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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