Name: Kidney Beans
Ingredients: young kidney beans; cheese whey; water; coarse sea salt; dill; alegar (sour beer or vinegar); black pepper; Jamaica pepper; sliced ginger

Why it works: Dill and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,630 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Kidney Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make a strong brine with cheese whey and water, enough to float an egg.
Add fresh, young kidney beans to the brine and let them sit until they turn bright yellow.
Drain the beans through a sieve and dry them with a coarse cloth.
Place the beans in a brass pan and cover with alegar.
Add dill and seal the pan with paper to trap steam.
Heat on a slow fire until the beans turn green.
Transfer the beans to a jar and cover with fresh alegar boiled with black pepper, Jamaica pepper, and sliced ginger.

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.

Dill + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Dill + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together87 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beer + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Cheese + beertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone (spice).

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

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, whey, dill, beer, pepper, ginger):

Beansfits better
Walnutfits better
Almondfits better
Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, whey, dill, beer, pepper, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.