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Curried Beans

A bean dish simmered with carrot, onion, curry, and flour, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Curried Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the beans slowly until tender.

  2. In a pan, heat the oil or butter and fry the chopped carrot and onion for 5 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the flour and curry powder, mixing well.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the water or some of the liquid from the cooked beans and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the mixture and add the cooked beans.

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

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

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

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

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 protein of the dish, becoming tender as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the fat and liquid.
Curry powder
Adds the warm spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, forming the flavour base.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and acidity that balances the curry spices.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and curry powder. Flour must be stirred into the hot fat and vegetables so it cooks evenly without lumps; cooking it briefly in fat removes raw flour taste and helps the spices bloom. Adding the liquid too early or without mixing well can leave lumps.

Swap the apple

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

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

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