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Dried Beans

A simple dish of dried beans simmered with celery, garlic, pepper, salt, and olive oil, served over stale bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Dried Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Half-boil the beans in water.

  2. Add celery, garlic, pepper, salt, and olive oil.

  3. Serve over slices of stale bread when the beans are 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. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried beans
Provide the main body of the dish, softening as they cook to a tender texture.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and moisture as it cooks down into the beans.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens during cooking.
Olive oil
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour through the beans.
Stale bread
Acts as a base that soaks up the cooking liquid and oil.

The step that matters

Half-boil the beans in water.. Beans must be cooked until fully tender before serving; they can stay firm or tough if cooking stops too early, and dried beans need time to hydrate and soften evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, celery, garlic, pepper, olive, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, celery, garlic, pepper, olive, bread. 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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