Skip to main content
Main

Kidney Beans

Cooked kidney beans seasoned with salt, butter, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Kidney beans and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Kidney Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. String the kidney beans, then slit them down the middle and cut them across.

  2. Soak the beans in salt and water.

Cook

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add a handful of salt, and then add the beans.

  2. Cook until tender, then drain through a sieve or colander.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and a splash of vinegar if desired.

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. Kidney beans + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Kidney beans + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together186 recipes

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

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beans
Provide the main body and starchy, hearty texture of the dish.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that coats the beans and carries flavor.
Vinegar
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Raw kidney beans contain a toxin that is destroyed only by thorough boiling, so the beans must be cooked fully before they are eaten.

Swap the kidney beans

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

  1. Soybeanfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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.

More kidney beans recipes

Preserved 3 See all 16 →

You might also like

Beef Kidney in GravyBeef Kidney in Gravy53 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes