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Haricot Beans and Bacon

A bean stew flavored with bacon, garlic, and bouquet garni, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Haricot Beans and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans in cold water overnight.

  2. Cut the bacon into half-inch dice.

Cook the beans

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the bacon and beans with enough cold water to cover them.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

  3. Stir in the flour, pepper, bouquet garni, and garlic or eschalot.

  4. Let the mixture simmer slowly.

  5. Remove the bouquet garni when the sauce has thickened and the beans and bacon are ready.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender base as they cook.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beans and the sauce as it renders.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it simmers with the beans.
Garlic or eschalot
Adds aromatic flavor that deepens the savory character of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after adding the flour. Flour needs gentle simmering to cook out its raw taste and thicken evenly. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom of the pan and break up the beans.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, flour, 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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