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Spanish Beans

A bean stew with tomatoes, onions, peppers, and rice, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the red beans overnight.

  2. Drain and rinse the beans, then parboil for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and rinse again.

Cook

  1. Add the strained tomatoes, chopped onions, green peppers, oil, and water.

  2. Boil until thoroughly cooked.

  3. An hour before serving, add the washed rice.

  4. Season with salt and remove the peppers when done.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red beans
Provide the main body and starchy texture of the dish.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that flavours the beans as they simmer.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften during cooking.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the dish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Parboil the beans and rinse again. Beans contain lectins that are destroyed by thorough boiling, and soaking and parboiling remove compounds that cause digestive upset. Rinsing removes the water they were cooked in, so the final pot is not clouded or bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, pepper, rice. 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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