Skip to main content
Main

Red Beans, Bourguignonne

A French-style red bean stew with bacon, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Red Beans, Bourguignonne

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Wash and clean the beans, then place them in a saucepan with the onions, carrots, parsley, and bacon.

  2. Add cold water to cover the ingredients and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam.

  3. Reduce heat and let it cook slowly until the beans are three-quarters cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the onions, carrots, and parsley, then drain off half the liquid.

  2. Add the claret wine, cover the saucepan, and simmer until the beans are fully cooked.

  3. Before serving, stir in the butter and serve with sliced bacon.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Red beans
Form the main body of the dish and become tender and creamy as they cook slowly.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury flavour to the cooking liquid and is served sliced on top.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour as the beans finish simmering.
Butter
Stirred in at the end to add richness and a glossy finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the wine. Once the claret is added, a gentle simmer with the lid on lets the beans finish cooking evenly without drying out, while the liquid reduces and flavours meld. Boiling hard can break the beans apart.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, parsley, wine, butter. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes