Skip to main content
Main

Brittany Beans

A buttery bean stew with onions, stock, and haricot beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brittany Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Scald and drain the sliced onions.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onions in butter until pale brown.

  2. Sprinkle flour, pepper, and salt over the onions and toss for 5 minutes.

  3. Add stock and stew for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Add well-cooked haricot beans and toss with additional butter before serving.

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. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the onions brown and coating the beans.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks with the onions.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the onions and forms the body of the sauce.
Haricot beans
Provide the main bulk and soft, starchy texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring while the stock stews. Flour mixed with onions can clump when liquid is added. Frequent stirring keeps the flour dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than becoming lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes