Name: White or Kidney Beans, with Puree of Onions, Soubise
Ingredients: 2 cups white or kidney beans; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; A few spoonfuls of onion puree; Scallops of artichokes for garnish

Why it works: Onion and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 738 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White or Kidney Beans, with Puree of Onions, Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beans

Cook the beans as directed in the previous recipe.
In a saucepan, combine the cooked beans with butter.
Season with salt and pepper, then add the onion puree.
Let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes.

Garnish and serve

Garnish with scallops of artichokes before serving.

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.

Onion + artichoketop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together738 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + artichoketop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,170 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Kidney beans + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

White or kidney beans: Form the body of the dish and absorb the butter and onion flavour.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the beans.
Onion puree: Adds savoury onion flavour and thickens the mixture slightly as it simmers.

Swap the kidney beans

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

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, onion, scallop, artichoke. 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.