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Kidney Bean Stew

A hearty stew of soaked kidney beans, onions, tomatoes, rice, and optional salt pork, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Kidney Bean Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans and soak them overnight in 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Cook the beans in the soaking water over low heat for about 2 hours, adding more water if necessary to keep them covered.

  3. For added flavor, include the salt pork at the beginning of cooking.

Finish the stew

  1. Add the chopped onion and canned tomatoes to the beans and cook for another 30 minutes.

  2. Wash the rice and add it to the pot, cooking until tender.

  3. Mix the flour with a little cold water and stir it in to thicken the stew.

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 + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 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

Kidney beans
Form the bulk of the stew and give it a creamy, starchy body as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, sauce-like stew when stirred in.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, building the stew's savory base.
Rice
Absorbs liquid as it cooks, adding body and making the stew more filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first; added dry or lumpy, it clumps and won't thicken evenly. Starch thickens the liquid only once it is heated, so the stew needs to be simmering while it is stirred.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, onion, tomato, rice, pork):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, onion, tomato, rice, pork. 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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