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Haricot Beans

A simple boiled haricot bean dish seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Strain the beans and let them stand for a day or two, if possible.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the beans into a saucepan with boiling water and dripping, and add salt.

  2. Simmer gently for two hours, or until the beans are quite soft.

  3. Drain the beans in a colander and return them to the saucepan.

  4. Add butter, parsley, salt, and pepper, and stir over the fire for five minutes.

  5. Serve in a hot vegetable dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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, softening into a tender, creamy texture when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when stirred into the hot beans.

The step that matters

Simmering until quite soft. Dried haricot beans need a long, gentle simmer for their starches to gelatinise and their skins to soften. Stopping early leaves them firm and unevenly cooked, while a hard boil can break them apart.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley. 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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