Name: Haricot Beans
Ingredients: 1 quart of beans; 2 quarts of soft water; 2 tablespoons of butter; 1 tablespoon of salt

Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

1 quart of beans
2 quarts of soft water
2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of salt

Directions

Prepare

Soak the beans in cold water for 2 to 4 hours, depending on their age.
Drain the beans and place them in a pot with 2 quarts of fresh soft water and the salt.

Cook and serve

Bring to a boil and cook until tender.
Stir in the 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.

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

Beans: Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish as they soften during cooking.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel when stirred into the cooked beans.

“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.