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White Haricot Beans

A dish of white haricot beans cooked with white sauce, butter, shallot, salt, and pepper, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 147 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

White Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in water for 3-4 hours.

  2. Boil the beans slowly until tender.

  3. Strain and dry the beans.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the minced shallot to the butter and sauté.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the beans with the white sauce and shallot mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve hot, ideally with roast mutton.

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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

White haricot beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy when slowly boiled.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich coating that binds the beans together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and carries the shallot as it cooks.
Shallot
Adds a mild, aromatic sweetness that deepens as it sautés in butter.

The step that matters

Boil the beans slowly until tender. Beans need gentle, steady simmering to soften evenly. Rapid boiling can break the skins and leave the centres firm, so the dish turns out uneven in texture.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, shallot, 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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