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Haricot Beans

Plain haricot beans boiled with optional onion, gravy or butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in cold water for 3 hours.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a pot with fresh cold water and the onion if using.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the beans for 3 hours until tender.

  2. Drain the beans again and return them to the pot.

  3. Add gravy or butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Toss over low heat for a few minutes and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 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, becoming tender and creamy after long soaking and boiling.
Gravy or butter
Adds fat and moisture, giving the beans a richer mouthfeel and savoury flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Boil the beans for 3 hours until tender. Dried haricot beans contain compounds that resist digestion until fully cooked, and they soften unevenly if undercooked. Testing for tenderness rather than relying only on the timer helps ensure even texture throughout.

Swap the onion

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

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

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