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Curry Beans

A stew of beans with onion, apple, carrot, butter, curry powder, tomato sauce, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans until tender.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Fry the onion, apple, and carrot in melted butter.

  2. Add water or stock, curry powder, salt, and tomato sauce; simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans and mix them with the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of rice.

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

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

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  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 main body of the dish and provide substance and protein-rich bulk.
Onion
Softens and sweetens when fried, forming the base flavour of the sauce.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and softens into the sauce as it fries and simmers.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it cooks down.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and savoury depth, colouring and thickening the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and gives the fried vegetables richness.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce. Simmering for the stated 10 minutes lets the curry powder bloom and the liquid reduce slightly, so the sauce thickens and the flavours merge. Stirring the sauce helps the flavours blend evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, carrot, butter, tomato, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, carrot, butter, tomato, sauce. 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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