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Butter Beans

A simple boiled bean dish seasoned with butter, salt, and optional salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Butter Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shell the butter beans and place them in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Add a small piece of salt pork and cook rapidly for about 1 hour, maintaining the water level.

  3. Drain the beans and serve with butter and salt, or serve with salt pork for a more economical option.

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. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  2. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + beanstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter beans
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and creamy as they cook in water.
Salt pork
Releases fat and savory flavor into the cooking water, seasoning the beans as they simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty coating when served over the drained beans.

The step that matters

Maintaining the water level during cooking. Beans cooked above the waterline cook unevenly, so some stay firm while others break down. Keeping them fully submerged in steadily boiling water lets them soften evenly over the hour.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pork):

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Soybeanfits better
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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