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To Cook Haricot Beans

A method for cooking haricot beans with salt, oil, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Cook Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans in plenty of cold water.

  2. Add a little coarse sea salt to the boiling beans.

  3. Let the beans boil for about 2 hours until the skins begin to crack.

  4. Strain the beans, reserving the water for soup, and cover the beans with a thick cloth.

  5. Place the saucepan on the hob for 1 hour to steam the beans until thoroughly cooked and mealy.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat a little sweet dripping until frothy.

  2. Add the cooked beans to the stewpan.

  3. Toss the beans with a wooden spoon until they turn a pale gold color.

  4. Season with pepper and serve 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

Haricot beans
Form the dish's main body, becoming soft and mealy when cooked long and slowly.
Sweet dripping
Adds fat and richness, and helps the beans take on a pale golden colour when tossed.

The step that matters

Steaming the cooked beans under a cloth. Beans must be fully softened before finishing; if they are undercooked they stay firm and grainy. Steaming for a full hour with the cloth absorbing moisture lets them turn mealy rather than watery.

“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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