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Windsor Beans

A savory bean dish simmered with parsley, green onions, savory, sugar, and thickened with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Windsor Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the Windsor beans in salted water until nearly done.

  2. Drain the beans and stew them with parsley, green onions, savory, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the beans are reduced, add a thickening made of egg yolks and thick cream.

  2. Serve with a short sauce and season properly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Windsor beans
Form the main body of the dish as the starchy vegetable being cooked down.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth, lightly set sauce when gently heated.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body, combining with egg yolks to make the thickening.
Green onions
Add mild onion aroma that flavours the beans as they stew.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream thickening. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding the thickening once the beans are reduced, and keeping heat gentle, helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, sugar, egg, cream. 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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