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Stewed Beans

A hearty bean stew cooked with meat or gravy, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick and wash the dried beans.

  2. Place the beans in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour, then drain the water and add fresh boiling water.

Stew and season

  1. Continue to simmer, adding more hot water as needed, until the beans are thoroughly cooked.

  2. When nearly done, add the pieces of meat or beef gravy, or a piece of butter.

  3. Season with sugar and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Ensure the beans have plenty of juice and are not dry.

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 + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 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

Dried round or pea beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they cook through.
Steak, roast beef, or lamb
Adds savory meaty flavor to the cooking liquid as it simmers with the beans.
Beef gravy
Adds savory depth and extra juice to the beans near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Keep the beans covered in juice. Beans that dry out stop absorbing liquid and can toughen or scorch, so adding hot water as needed keeps them moist and evenly cooked.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, 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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