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Beans and Wine

A simple dish of dried red beans simmered with butter, onion, clove, bouquet garni, stock, and Burgundy wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beans and Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in an enamelled saucepan with butter, onion, clove, bouquet garni, and enough stock to cover.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer slowly until the beans are tender but dry.

  2. Remove the bouquet garni, add the wine, pepper, and salt, and heat until very hot.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

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

Dried red beans
Form the main body of the dish and become tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the beans.
Burgundy or claret
Adds acidity and aromatic depth when heated into the finished beans.
Clear stock
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the beans and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the beans are tender but dry. Gentle simmering lets the beans soften evenly without splitting. Boiling hard can break the skins and turn them mushy, while cooking until the liquid is absorbed keeps them from becoming soupy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, onion, pepper. 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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