Skip to main content
Main

To Boll Windsor Beans

Boiled young Windsor beans served with parsley, butter, and optional bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Boll Windsor Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the beans just before cooking.

  2. Wash the beans.

  3. Drain the beans.

Boil

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the beans and cook until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

  2. Serve with a tureen of parsley and butter or plain melted butter.

  3. Optionally, top with boiled bacon, trimmed of any blackened parts.

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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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

Young windsor beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and mild when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the beans when served melted or as a sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the buttered sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the beans thoroughly. Excess cooking water left on the beans dilutes the parsley and butter, so they taste watery and the sauce will not cling well.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, pork. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes