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Drink

Bean Tea or Broth

A simple broth made by simmering soaked beans in water, optionally finished with hot cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,341 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Bean Tea or Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in soft water overnight.

Make the broth

  1. The next day, boil the soaked beans in 1 quart of water.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour or longer, keeping the pot covered.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and serve plain or add hot cream if desired.

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 + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Their starch and protein dissolve into the water, giving the broth body and flavor.
Water
Extracts flavor and starch from the beans and forms the broth base.

The step that matters

Cook slowly with the pot covered. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and softens the beans without breaking them apart. A hard boil can cloud the broth and cause the beans to disintegrate, while the lid holds in moisture so the water does not reduce too much.

“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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