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Haricot Beans

A simple bean dish cooked with butter, parsley, and dripping, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

Cook the beans

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soaked beans, dripping, and 3 pints of fresh cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and gently boil for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the beans in a colander and return them to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir over heat for 5 minutes, then serve on a hot dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Make up the bulk of the dish; their starch cooks into a soft, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a smooth, glossy finish.
Dripping
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Gently boil the beans for 2 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the beans evenly while keeping their skins intact. A hard, rolling boil tumbles them about, so they split and turn mushy.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, 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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