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Bboab Beans

A simple dish of boiled beans tossed in butter and seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bboab Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the beans until tender, then drain them.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the beans and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  4. Toss the beans over the heat for a few minutes and serve.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Young beans
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the beans and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the buttered beans.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar. 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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