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Haricot Beans

A simple boiled haricot bean dish seasoned with salt, pepper, butter or dripping, and optionally parsley or cold fat bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the haricot beans in cold water overnight.

  2. In a pot, cover the beans with cold water and add salt.

  3. Boil gently for two hours, adding boiling water as needed to keep the beans covered.

  4. Stir in butter or dripping, and season with pepper and salt before serving.

  5. Optionally, add diced cold fat bacon ten minutes before serving and season again.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 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

Haricot beans
Form the main body of the dish, turning tender and creamy after long gentle cooking.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cold fat bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour as it renders into the beans.

The step that matters

Boil gently for two hours. Keeping the beans covered with water while simmering gently lets them cook evenly and soften without splitting or drying out. A hard boil can break the skins and leave the beans mushy outside and firm inside.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Cuminfits less well

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

More haricot beans recipes

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