Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Beans

Haricot beans simmered with carrots, onion, herbs, salt, pepper, and butter.

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

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in water for 24 hours before using.

  2. Drain the beans and put them into a saucepan.

  3. Cover the beans with warm water.

Simmer

  1. Add the carrots, onion, and herbs.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Let them simmer for 2 hours or until tender.

  4. Drain the beans and season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the beans and stir until heated through.

  3. Serve with parsley and butter if desired.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture once softened by soaking and simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when melted over the cooked beans.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Dried beans need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Adding salt early in cooking can slow softening, so check tenderness before relying on it; undercooked beans stay firm and mealy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More haricot beans recipes

Boiled 16with Bacon 6with Onions 5White 4Boiled White 3Plain 3 See all 42 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes