Skip to main content

Beans Alia Romana

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and onion 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 ↓

Beans Alia Romana

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the beans with salt and water.

  2. Boil the beans partially, then strain them.

  3. In a pot, heat butter and brown the chopped onion.

  4. Add the beans, pepper, nutmeg, and softened anchovies mixed with a little oil and some of the bean water.

  5. Let the mixture stew until most of the liquid evaporates.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, pepper, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

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