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Haricot Beans, Curried

A stew of haricot beans with curry, apple, onion, capers, and butter, served hot over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 76 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Beans, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pare and slice the onion.

  2. Sauté the onion in butter in a stewpan.

  3. Pare, core, and slice the apple.

  4. Add the apple to the stewpan and fry for a few minutes.

Make the curry

  1. Mix the flour and curry powder with 1 pint of water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the stewpan.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Let the mixture boil until the gravy thickens.

  5. Add the beans, capers, and curry paste.

  6. Heat through.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled rice.

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 + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 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
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the curry gravy as they heat.
Flour
Thickens the water and curry powder into a smooth gravy as it boils.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour of the gravy.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and softens it when sautéed, adding richness.
Apple
Softens while frying and adds a mild sweetness that balances the curry spice.
Onion
Softens in butter and builds a savoury base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil until the gravy thickens. Flour needs to reach a boil to swell and set; stopping early leaves a thin, floury-tasting gravy instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, flour, onion, capers, 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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