Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Beans

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

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

Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Stewed Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans in water with a lump of butter until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Chop the sweet herbs and parsley finely.

  2. In a separate pot, combine the water from the boiled beans and cream.

  3. Add the chopped herbs and parsley to the pot and stew until tender.

  4. Add the beans and stew for an additional 5 minutes.

  5. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Fresh beans
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the stew a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the stew body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavor and smoothing the texture of the stew.
Sweet herbs
Contribute aroma and savory flavor as they stew in the liquid.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be stirred in well and cooked in the simmering liquid so its starch swells and thickens evenly. Adding it unevenly causes lumps, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, cream, 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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes