Scarlet bean + Chinese broccoli
Phaseolus coccineus, known as runner bean, scarlet runner bean, or multiflora bean, is a plant in the Fabaceae family. Runner beans have also been called "Oregon Lima Bean", and in Nahuatl "ayocotl" or in Spanish "ayocote". It differs from the common bean (P. vulgaris) in several respects: the cotyledons stay in the ground during germination, and the plant is a perennial vine with tuberous roots (though it is usually treated as an annual). This species originated from the mountains of Central America. Most varieties have red flowers and multicolored seeds (though some have white flowers and white seeds), and they are often grown as ornamental plants.

Kai-lan (also written as gai-lan) is the Cantonese name for a vegetable that is also known as Chinese broccoli or Chinese kale. It is a leaf vegetable featuring thick, flat, glossy blue-green leaves with thick stems and a small number of tiny flower heads similar to those of broccoli. Broccoli and kai-lan belong to the same species Brassica oleracea, but kai-lan is in the group alboglabra [Latin albus+glabrus white and hairless]. Its flavor is very similar to that of broccoli, but slightly more bitter. It is also noticeably stronger. Broccolini is a hybrid between broccoli and kai-lan, produced by Mann Packing Company, Inc.
Shared flavor compounds
These compounds appear in both Scarlet bean and Chinese broccoli, giving them a molecular basis for flavor affinity, the pairing principle articulated by Francois Benzi and implemented in flavor-pairing research.
Why it works
The flavor-pairing hypothesis proposes that ingredients sharing significant aromatic compounds harmonize on the palate. Scarlet bean and Chinese broccoli overlap on 20 key compound(s), which is why classic culinary traditions, and our deterministic matching algorithm, place them together.
- Pairing computed by: pairing-compute
- Methodology: deterministic compound-overlap matching (no LLM)
- Compound data: Wikidata + Wikidata
- Part of: Living Gastronomic Intelligence graph