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Simmered Beans and Peas

Simmered beans and peas are cooked slowly with baking soda and butter, optionally with tomatoes, until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Simmered Beans and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans and peas overnight.

  2. Place them in cold water in a double boiler.

Simmer

  1. When they begin to soften (about 30 minutes), add the baking soda.

  2. Turn off the water after 5 minutes.

  3. Cover with hot water and cook for 3 hours or until well done.

Finish

  1. Season with butter.

  2. Optionally, add tomatoes and continue cooking until they resemble baked beans.

  3. For a thicker juice, mash 1 cup of cooked beans or peas through a sieve and add the pulp to the juice.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans or peas
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they simmer for hours.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's alkalinity, helping the skins soften and the beans break down.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished beans.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Add it only once the beans begin to soften, as the alkaline water helps break down skins and pectin. Too much can leave the beans mushy and give a soapy, bitter taste.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter. 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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