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Cold Dried Beans

A cake made from cold dried beans, cream, butter, and optionally grated cheese, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cold Dried Beans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Rub the cold dried beans through a sieve.

  2. Add the cream and mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into cakes.

  2. Sprinkle with grated cheese if desired.

  3. Brown the cakes in a 400°F (200°C) oven or fry in hot butter in a skillet.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beans + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together741 recipes

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

  4. Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold dried beans
Form the bulk of the cakes and hold their shape once pressed through a sieve.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness so the mixture binds and stays tender.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, giving richer flavor and golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in hot butter. Butter contains milk solids that brown quickly and can burn if the skillet is too hot. Enough heat is needed for a golden crust, but the cakes should be watched so the butter does not scorch before the centers are heated through.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cheese, 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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