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Feves De Marais Et Tomates a l'Indienne [Curried Broad Beans and Tomatoes]

A curried dish of broad beans and tomatoes served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Feves De Marais Et Tomates a l'Indienne [Curried Broad Beans and Tomatoes]

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Shell the broad beans and boil them in salted water until almost tender.

  2. Drain the beans and remove the skin while hot.

  3. Blanch the tomatoes, remove the skin, and slice them.

  4. In a sauté pan, toss the tomato slices in butter for a few minutes.

Combine and simmer

  1. Combine the tomatoes with the broad beans, season with salt and pepper.

  2. Moisten with curry sauce and let simmer for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange boiled rice on a hot dish, place the vegetables in the center, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Broad beans
Form the main body of the dish and provide a firm, starchy bulk.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that soften into the sauce as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the tomato slices take on flavor when tossed.
Curry sauce
Supplies the spiced flavor and liquid that moistens the vegetables during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering the beans in the curry sauce. Simmering for the full 20 minutes lets the beans absorb the sauce and the flavors blend. Stopping early leaves the dish thin and under-seasoned.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cuminfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, butter, pepper, sauce, rice. 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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