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Beef and Beans

A stew of brisket, French beans, onions, seasoned with pepper, salt, and a flour, sugar, vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef and Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Cover the brisket of beef with water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Add the French beans and quartered onions.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Finish the beans

  1. When nearly done, mix the flour, brown sugar, and vinegar together.

  2. Stir the mixture into the beans and continue stewing for about 30 minutes.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering.
French beans
Form the bulk of the dish and soften as they stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour, sugar and vinegar mixture. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid can clump. Combining it first with the sugar and vinegar, then stirring it evenly into the beans, helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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