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Beans, Haricot, Boiled

A simple boiled bean dish flavored with oatmeal, sugar, and unsalted fat, cooked without salt until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,587 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Beans, Haricot, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in 2 quarts of cold water with 2 ounces of oatmeal for several hours.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans thoroughly.

Cook

  1. In a pot, add the beans to fresh cold water or stock.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer continuously.

  4. Add a pinch of sugar and a morsel of unsalted fat to improve flavor.

  5. Do not add salt until the beans are tender to avoid hardening the skins.

  6. Cook until the beans are soft, allowing excess water to evaporate.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, providing starch and protein that soften into a tender, creamy texture when simmered.
Oatmeal
Used in the soaking water, where it may add body and help the beans soften.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the flavor of the beans.
Unsalted fat
Adds richness and mouthfeel, carrying flavor through the beans during cooking.

The step that matters

Do not add salt until the beans are tender. Salt added early can toughen bean skins and slow softening, so the beans may stay firm even after long cooking. Salting after they are tender avoids this.

“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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