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Stewed Beef and Haricot Beans

A stew of beef and haricot beans cooked slowly with onions, fat, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef and Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Put the beans in a saucepan with 3 pints of cold water and bring to a boil. Boil the beans for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the beans and reserve the cooking water.

Make the gravy

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. Heat the dripping in a saucepan. Fry the sliced onions in the dripping until golden.

  3. Stir in the flour. Gradually add the reserved water, stirring constantly. Stir until the mixture boils.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the beef and seasoning.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Soften during soaking and boiling, becoming tender and creamy to make the body of the dish.
Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the dripping.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is cooked with the water.
Dripping
Carries the heat for frying the onions and adds richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and add the water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, so the gravy thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, beef, 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.

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