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Salad

Haricot Bean Salad

A salad of boiled haricot beans, hard‑boiled eggs, and a dressing of butter, anchovy sauce, tarragon vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans and eggs

  1. Boil the soaked haricot beans until tender, then allow to cool and remove the skins.

  2. Hard boil the eggs, cut them in half, and remove the yolks.

  3. In a bowl, pound the yolks with butter, anchovy sauce, tarragon vinegar, salt, and cayenne.

  4. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine the raw egg yolk, salt, pepper, and dissolved mustard in a bowl.

  2. Slowly add salad oil while stirring, then whisk until thick.

  3. Stir in tarragon vinegar, white vinegar, and chopped capers.

Arrange and serve

  1. Place the dressed beans in the center of a dish, forming a neat mound.

  2. Arrange the filled egg whites around the base of the beans.

  3. Make a border with shredded lettuce around the eggs.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + tarragontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

White haricot beans
Provide the bulk of the salad, with a soft, tender texture once boiled.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply the filling and the mild, creamy richness of the yolks.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the mashed yolk filling.
Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil into the dressing, thickening it into a sauce.
Salad oil
Forms the body of the dressing as it is whisked into the yolk.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the filling and the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil to the raw egg yolk. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so it emulsifies into the yolk. Adding it too fast causes the sauce to break and separate instead of thickening.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, anchovy, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, anchovy, sauce, tarragon, vinegar, 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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