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Curried Beans with Tomato

A bean dish simmered with tomato, apple or orange, onion, curry powder, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Beans with Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick over and wash the pink beans, then place them in a pot with cold water.

  2. Heat slowly until boiling, then add baking soda and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans and return them to the pot with plenty of boiling water, then cook for another 10 minutes, then drain and rinse thoroughly.

Make the curry and finish

  1. Peel and chop the apple (or orange) and onion.

  2. Fry the apple and onion in oil until soft.

  3. Add curry powder and salt to taste, then stir in the tomatoes.

  4. Combine the mixture with the beans and cook for a few more minutes.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Apple + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

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

  5. Beans + appletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pink beans
Form the bulk of the dish and, once cooked, give it a soft, hearty texture.
Baking soda
Raises the pot's alkalinity, helping the beans soften during boiling.
Apple or orange
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balance the curry spice.
Onion
Softens and builds a savoury base of flavour when fried in oil.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and body that bind the curry into a sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans with baking soda. Baking soda raises the pH of the cooking water, which helps the beans' skins and cell walls soften. Boiling them for the full time and then draining and rinsing removes the compounds that cause gas and bitterness, so the beans end up tender rather than tough or harsh.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, tomato. 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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