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Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

A simple dish of haricot beans cooked with onions, brown gravy, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot Beans and Minced Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and mince the onions, not too finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onions in butter until they are light brown.

  2. Dredge a little flour over the onions.

  3. Add the brown gravy and season with pepper and salt.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix in the boiled and drained haricot beans with the onions and gravy.

  2. Serve very hot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the flavour of the onion and gravy.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and brown in butter.
Brown gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury flavour that coats the beans and onions.
Flour
Thickens the cooking juices so the gravy clings to the beans and onions.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the onions brown.

The step that matters

Dredge a little flour over the onions. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter and onion fat before the gravy goes in. Adding it raw, or in clumps, leaves a floury taste and lumps instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, flour, 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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