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To Boil White Haricot Beans

A boiled dish of white haricot beans seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil White Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Rinse the beans and place them in a clean saucepan with 2 quarts of cold water and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Boil slowly for about 3 hours.

  3. Drain the water from the beans.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and 2 ounces of butter.

  2. Heat on the stove, stirring for a few minutes until thoroughly hot.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Beans + buttertop 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

White haricot beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish once softened by long gentle boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the beans as they finish heating.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for about 3 hours. A gentle simmer softens the beans evenly without breaking their skins. A hard rolling boil can burst them and leave the texture ragged, so keep the water just bubbling.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

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