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Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

A simple dish of haricot beans simmered with onions, butter, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Put the beans in a saucepan with a little dripping and 2 quarts of fresh cold water.

  3. Boil gently for 2 hours.

  4. Drain the beans in a colander.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel and chop the onions into small pieces.

  2. Fry the onions in the butter until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add the gravy, pepper, and salt.

  5. Stir until it boils and thickens.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the beans.

  2. Mix well.

  3. Serve hot in a vegetable 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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender through long gentle boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and brown in butter.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce that coats the beans.
Brown gravy
Supplies savoury flavour and liquid for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion frying and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Fry the onions in the butter until light brown. Stop at light brown so the onions stay sweet; over-browning turns them bitter. Stirring in the flour after the onions have softened lets it cook slightly and avoids a raw floury taste in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, flour, pepper, butter. 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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