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To Stew Windsor Beans with Butter

A stew of Windsor beans cooked with onion, butter, water, and seasonings, finished with a flour‑water roux and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Stew Windsor Beans with Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick a peck of beans and remove the inside shells.

Cook the stew

  1. Put the beans in a stewpan with the chopped onion, salt, pepper, nutmeg, butter, and water.

  2. Cook until the beans are tender.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little water until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped parsley to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the beans along with the cooking liquid.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

Windsor beans
Form the body of the stew, becoming soft and tender as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when stirred in.
Onion
Contributes savory aromatic flavor as it cooks down with the beans.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the beans. Flour lumps form if it is added dry or unevenly. Mixing it smooth with water first lets the starch disperse and thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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