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Dry White Beans, Maitre D'hotel

A French bean dish simmered with bacon or salt pork, seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Dry White Beans, Maitre D'hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick and wash the dry beans in cold water.

  2. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

  3. Drain the beans and place them in a saucepan, covering them with water.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then add a piece of parboiled bacon or salt pork.

  2. Cover and cook the beans slowly until tender.

  3. Remove the pork or bacon and drain half of the liquid from the beans.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add butter and chopped parsley. Toss the beans until the butter is melted.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry white beans
Form the main body of the dish and become tender and creamy when slowly simmered.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds savory, smoky fat and flavor to the cooking liquid that the beans absorb.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that carries flavor across the beans.
Fresh parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Cook the beans slowly until tender. Gentle simmering keeps the skins intact and lets the starch soften evenly. A hard boil can break the beans apart and leave them mushy outside and firm inside.

Swap the beans

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

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

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