Name: Bacon and Broad Beans
Ingredients: slices of cooked bacon; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 cup milk or water; broad beans; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bacon and Broad Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Make a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk or water until smooth.
Partially cook the broad beans until tender.

Combine and finish

Combine the bacon, beans, and white sauce in a pan.
Cook until the beans are fully done and the sauce has absorbed the flavor of the bacon.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter: Melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the white sauce.
Flour: Combines with melted butter to thicken the milk or water into a white sauce.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding body and creaminess.
Broad beans: Form the main vegetable, cooked until tender and absorbing the sauce.
Bacon: Adds savory, smoky flavor that the sauce absorbs during final cooking.

The step that matters

Whisking the milk into the roux. Adding liquid gradually while whisking keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the beans

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Milletfits about as well
Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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Bacon and Broad Beans