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Baked Bean Rarebit

A baked bean and cheese mixture served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Bean Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt and paprika, then stir in the milk and cold mashed beans.

  3. Heat the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Add the grated cheese and stir until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve on small circular pieces of toasted bread or zephyrettes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold mashed beans
Provide the body and bulk of the sauce, thickening it as they heat through.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the beans and cheese blend into.
Grated soft mild cheese
Melts into the sauce to add savoury flavour and a creamy, stringy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly before adding the cheese. Beans and milk need to be fully hot so the sauce is evenly heated and smooth. Cheese added to a cool or uneven mixture can clump or turn grainy, while heating it in the sauce lets it melt evenly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, cheese, bread. 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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