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Dry White Beans, Bretonne

A Breton bean dish with onions, butter, vinegar, and Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dry White Beans, Bretonne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the beans as directed in a previous recipe and drain them in a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and fry the onions until light brown.

  2. Add the vinegar to the onions and reduce by one-third.

  3. Stir in a few spoonfuls of Espagnole sauce and the drained beans.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, cover, and let simmer for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy during simmering.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth in the base.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion browning and adds richness to the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Espagnole sauce
Brown sauce that adds body, savory flavor and color to the beans.

The step that matters

Reducing the vinegar. Reducing the vinegar by one-third cooks off harsh sharpness and concentrates its acidity, so the finished dish tastes balanced rather than sour.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Soybeanfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, vinegar, sauce, 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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