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Beans and Bacon

A simple dish of boiled beans topped with bacon, bread crumbs, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beans and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the beans and bacon separately, adding salt and parsley to the water.

  2. Once the beans are tender, drain them in a colander.

  3. Remove the skin from the bacon and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

Brown and serve

  1. Heat an iron until red-hot and hold it over the bacon to brown the top.

  2. If no iron is available, place the bacon before the fire to brown.

  3. Arrange the beans on a dish and place the bacon in the center on top.

  4. Serve with parsley and butter in a separate bowl.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the bulk of the dish, with starch that gives a soft, tender body when cooked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its surface browns to give a rich, roasted taste.
Bread crumbs
Form a dry topping that browns and crisps under direct heat.

The step that matters

Browning the bacon top. The iron must be red-hot so the surface browns quickly. If it is too cool, the bacon warms and releases moisture, which steams the top instead of browning it through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, bread, butter):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, bread, 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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