Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Beans

A hearty bean stew with salt pork, onion, garlic, chili powder, Worcestershire sauce, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. Drain the beans and cover them with fresh water.

  3. Add the salt pork and boil until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, brown the onion and garlic in olive oil.

  2. Stir in the chili powder and Worcestershire sauce, then add to the beans.

Simmer

  1. Add the can of tomatoes to the beans.

  2. Cook over low heat for 4 hours, ensuring the beans are just above the water.

  3. Add salt to taste if needed.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Small pink beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, once simmered, a creamy, tender base.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and meaty flavor that seasons the beans as they cook.
Onion and garlic
Browning in oil builds a sweet, aromatic base for the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that combine with the beans into a thick, flavorful sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savory depth that rounds out the chili and tomato flavors.

The step that matters

Keep the beans just above the water during the long simmer. Beans cooked for hours can scorch on the bottom of the pot or turn mushy if the liquid drops too low or they cook too hard. Keeping the level just above the beans and the heat low lets them soften gently and keeps the sauce from sticking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, onion, garlic, olive, sauce, tomato):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, onion, garlic, olive, sauce, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes