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Broad Beans

A baked dish of broad beans with butter, diced ham, sugar, salt, flour, herbs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,080 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broad Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bag, combine broad beans, butter, diced ham, sugar, salt, flour, sweet herbs, and water.

  3. Seal the bag and place it in the oven.

Bake

  1. Bake for 60 minutes.

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 + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender as they cook in the bag.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the beans moist and rich.
Diced ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor and fat that seasons the beans as they cook.
Flour
Its starch thickens the cooking liquid slightly so the juices turn lightly saucy.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the savory ham and salt.

The step that matters

Seal the bag tightly before baking. A tight seal traps steam and moisture around the beans, so they cook gently and stay tender instead of drying out in the oven.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, sugar, 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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