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Stewed Shelled Beans

A hearty stew of shelled beans cooked with salt pork, onion, flour, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Stewed Shelled Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cover the beans with boiling water.

  2. Boil the beans for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans.

Cook the pork and onion

  1. Cut the salt pork into slices.

  2. Fry the sliced salt pork slowly in a stewpan for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion to the stewpan.

  4. Cook the onion for 20 minutes on low heat.

Stew the beans

  1. Add the beans and flour to the stewpan with the pork and onion.

  2. Stir the mixture over the heat for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  4. Add the pepper.

  5. Simmer the mixture for 2 hours.

  6. Taste for salt and add more if needed.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shelled beans
Form the main body of the stew and absorb the cooking liquid as they soften.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding richness and savory flavor to the stew.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building a flavor base for the stew.
Flour
Stirred into the beans, it helps thicken the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans for 2 hours. A long, gentle simmer lets the beans soften fully and the liquid thicken. Too hard a boil can break the beans apart and make the stew cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, pepper, flour. 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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