Skip to main content
Salad

Bean Salad

A salad of cold cooked beans dressed with a sour cream and vinegar-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil vinegar, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg, sour cream, and flour.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling vinegar mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in salt, pepper, and mustard.

Assemble

  1. Mix the dressing with the cold cooked beans.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body.
Flour
Stabilises the cooked dressing so it thickens smoothly without splitting.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness.
Cold cooked beans
Form the body of the salad, absorbing the dressing.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture to the boiling vinegar mixture. Egg proteins can scramble if the mixture is overheated or added too quickly. Adding it gradually while stirring and cooking gently lets the egg and flour thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, vinegar, sugar, egg, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, sugar, egg, butter, 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.

More bean salad recipes

String 29Green 19French 11Kidney 11White 11Lima 6 See all 45 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes