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Steing Beans

Beans stewed with butter, onion, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Steing Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beans lengthwise.

  2. Heat some butter in a kettle.

  3. Add the sliced onion and the beans.

  4. Pour in enough boiling water to barely cover the beans.

Stew and finish

  1. Boil for two hours, replenishing water as necessary.

  2. Half an hour before serving, add minced parsley, thyme, salt, pepper, and flour mixed with cold water.

  3. Let it boil for two to three minutes.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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

Beans
Form the body of the dish and soften into a tender, stewed texture during long simmering.
Flour
Mixed with cold water and stirred in, it thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pot, carrying flavor and a smooth mouthfeel.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter and stews with the beans.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed with cold water must be stirred in evenly so it does not clump; dry flour added straight to hot liquid forms lumps. Boiling for two to three minutes afterward cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the liquid fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, parsley, thyme, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, parsley, thyme, pepper, flour. 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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