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Haricot Beans and Bacon

A simple dish of boiled haricot beans mashed with bacon fat, seasoned with pepper and salt, topped with parsley and bacon rashers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Haricot Beans and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the haricot beans and boil them according to previous instructions.

  2. Rub the beans through a wire sieve.

Make the bacon fat

  1. Cut the bacon into thin rashers and cook it in a small frying pan until the fat renders.

  2. Pour the rendered fat over the mashed beans.

Season and serve

  1. Mash the beans with the bacon fat, adding pepper and salt to taste.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a hot dish.

  3. Sprinkle parsley on top and lay the bacon rashers over it.

  4. 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. 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 main body of the dish once boiled and pressed into a purée.
Bacon
Renders fat that adds savoury richness and flavour to the mashed beans.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper. 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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