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Haricot Bean Stew

A simple stew of haricot beans simmered in water and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,347 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Haricot Bean Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the beans as you would for a vegetable dish.

  2. Place the beans in a saucepan with the boiling water and dripping.

  3. Cook gently for 1½ hours, or until the beans are quite soft.

  4. Strain the beans, reserving the cooking water for the gravy.

  5. Pour the brown gravy over the beans and serve hot.

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 + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 stew and become soft and tender when cooked gently.
Dripping
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, giving the beans a fuller flavour.
Brown gravy
Adds savoury flavour and moisture when poured over the beans before serving.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 1½ hours until the beans are quite soft. Dried beans need long, gentle simmering to soften fully. Cooking too hard can break the skins and leave the centres firm, so keep the heat low and test for softness before straining.

“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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