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Beans and Tomatoes

A stew of baked or boiled haricot beans thickened with flour and butter, flavored with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beans and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strain the beans.

  2. Thicken the cooking water with flour and butter.

  3. Add the tomato sauce and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in 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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Haricot beans
Provide the main body and starchy bulk of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking water into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the liquid.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, savoury flavour and colour to the stew.

The step that matters

Thicken the cooking water with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or it stays raw-tasting and lumpy. Stirring as the liquid heats lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, flour, butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, flour, butter, sauce. 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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