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Stewed Beans

A dish of beans simmered with butter, water, herbs, cream, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 863 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Stewed Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans in butter and water, keeping them as white as possible.

Make the herb sauce

  1. In a small pot, boil the chopped parsley and winter savory in a little of the bean water mixed with cream until tender.

  2. Add the beans to the herbs and let them stew for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in a lump of butter and flour to thicken the sauce.

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. Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Winter savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beans + winter savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they simmer in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps keep the beans pale during the initial boil.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beans.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal aroma to the sauce.
Winter savory
Adds a peppery, herbal aroma that complements the beans.

The step that matters

Keeping the beans white. Boiling beans in butter and water with limited browning keeps them pale; prolonged high heat or colour-producing contact can darken the beans and change the dish's appearance.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, winter savory, cream, flour, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, winter savory, cream, flour, 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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