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Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

A simple bean dish with browned onions, gravy, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and mince the onions, not too finely.

Make the onion base

  1. Fry the onions in butter until they acquire a light-brown color.

  2. Dredge a little flour over the onions, then add the gravy and season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled and drained haricot beans to the onion mixture, and mix well.

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

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

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

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

  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

White haricot beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the flavour of the gravy and onions.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury depth as they brown in butter.
Brown gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour that coats the beans and onions.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the beans rather than running off.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until light brown. Frying onions in butter drives off moisture and triggers browning reactions that build sweetness and savoury flavour. Stopping too early leaves a raw, sharp taste, while going too far makes them bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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