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Dessert

Bean Pie

A sweet pie made from white beans, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and puff pastry, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bean Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the white beans with a pinch of baking soda until tender, then drain and run through a sieve.

  2. Combine the sieved beans, sugar, butter, milk or cream, and egg yolks in a bowl. Stir the mixture well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a puff pastry crust.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread over the top of the pie.

  3. Return the pie to a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown the meringue.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White beans
Cooked and sieved, they form the smooth, body-giving base of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give the custard-like texture a glossy finish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel in the filling.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and dairy proteins that help the filling set softly when baked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness and colour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form the airy meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks so the meringue stays airy and holds its shape. Underwhipped whites stay loose and may weep or sink into the filling during baking.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Beansthe original

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