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Bean Polenta

Bean Polenta is a dish of boiled white soup beans cooked with butter, molasses, mustard, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Polenta

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans and soak them overnight in lukewarm water.

  2. In the morning, drain the water, cover the beans with fresh cold water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil slowly for one hour, then drain again.

Cook and season

  1. Cover the beans with one quart of fresh boiling water and boil slowly for another hour.

  2. Press the beans through a colander, return to the kettle, and add the butter, molasses, mustard, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  3. Stir and boil for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a vegetable tureen.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Small white soup beans
Form the main body of the dish once boiled and pressed into a smooth mash.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pressed beans.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color to the finished beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the sweetness of the molasses.
French mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that complements the sweet and acidic notes.

The step that matters

Pressing the beans through a colander. Pressing softened beans breaks down their cell walls into a smooth purée. If the beans are not fully tender before pressing, the result stays grainy and lumpy instead of smooth.

“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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