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Spanish Beans

A bean stew made with Italian beans, tomatoes, mustard, sugar, onion, pepper, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight with baking soda.

  2. Bring the beans to a boil in the same water, then rinse thoroughly.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the strained tomatoes, ground mustard, brown sugar, minced onion, red sweet pepper or pimentos, salt, red pepper, and olive oil.

  2. Add enough water to cover the beans and cook in a strausky or fireless cooker.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Italian beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the tomato sauce as they cook.
Baking soda
Softens the bean skins during soaking so they cook more evenly.
Strained tomatoes
Provide the liquid base and acidity that flavour the beans.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a richer mouthfeel.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, mustard, sugar, pepper, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, mustard, sugar, pepper, olive. 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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