Skip to main content
Main

Beans Spanish

A bean dish with pink beans, red peppers, bacon, lard, green pepper, garlic, cheese, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beans Spanish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pink beans overnight.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

  3. Boil the red peppers until soft, then rub through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce and beans

  1. In a frying pan, heat the lard and add the bacon or salt pork; fry until slightly brown.

  2. Add the pepper sauce and chopped green pepper to the pan.

  3. Stir in the finely chopped garlic, ensuring it's not noticeable.

  4. Add the beans and plenty of their cooking juice.

  5. Season with salt and mix in the grated cheese; cook until well flavored.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 its body and soft texture.
Red peppers
Become a smooth sieved sauce that supplies colour and sweet, mild pepper flavour.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries flavour and gives the pan-fried base richness.
Bacon or salt pork
Renders fat and savoury, smoky flavour into the lard as it browns.
Grated california cheese
Melts into the beans, adding savoury flavour and a rich, binding creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir in the garlic finely chopped. Garlic turns bitter and harsh if it scorches in hot fat, and large pieces stand out; finely chopped garlic added to the pan with the sauce ensures it cooks evenly and blends in, as the step intends.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, pork, garlic, cheese):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, pork, garlic, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipes