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Beans, Curried

A curried bean dish with apple, onion, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beans, Curried

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricot beans.

  2. Boil the soaked beans in water until tender, about 10 minutes.

  3. Chop the onion finely.

  4. Chop the apple finely.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Fry the chopped onion and apple in butter until soft.

  2. Mix the flour and curry powder.

  3. Add the flour and curry powder mixture to the onion and apple mixture.

  4. Pour in the water.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Thicken the sauce.

  7. Add the cooked beans.

  8. Stir to combine.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Haricot beans
Provide the main bulk and soft, creamy body of the dish.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and fruitiness that balances the curry spice.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid into a sauce when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the curry flavour through the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated to boiling. Stirring as the water goes in prevents lumps, and the sauce must reach a full boil to reach full thickness.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

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