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Navy Bean Salad

A salad of navy beans, lettuce, and a hot dressing of vinegar, sugar, butter, mustard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Navy Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare navy beans as for serving.

  2. Serve 1 tablespoon of beans on lettuce for each person.

Serve

  1. Pour 1 tablespoon of hot salad dressing over the beans just before serving.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add mustard and boil for a moment.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in well-beaten eggs.

  4. Heat the dressing to just below boiling point.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Navy beans
Provide the bulk and mild, starchy body of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the tangy dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing gently when stirred into warm liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the dressing.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that cuts through the sweet-sour dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs off the heat, then heat gently. Beaten eggs thicken a warm dressing by gently setting their proteins. If the mixture is allowed to boil after the eggs go in, the proteins can tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy, uneven dressing instead of a smooth one.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, vinegar, sugar, pepper, butter, mustard, egg):

  1. Sesamefits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, sugar, pepper, butter, mustard, egg. 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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