excess water, let them stand for an hour, then discard the soaking water and start the cooking with fresh water This does leach out most of the water-soluble oligosaccharides — but it also leaches out significant quantities of water-soluble vitamins, minerals, simple sugars, and seed-coat pigments: that is, nutrients, flavor, color, and antioxidants That’s a high price to pay An alternative is simple prolonged cooking, which helps by eventually breaking down much of the oligosaccharides and cell-wall cements into digestible single sugars Oligosaccharides are also consumed by the bean during germination, and consumed by microbes during fermentation: so sprouts, miso, and soy sauce, as well as extracts like bean curd, are less offensive than whole beans Bean Flavor Beans owe their typical beany flavor to a large endowment of the enzyme lipoxygenase, which breaks unsaturated fatty acids into small, odorous molecules The main components of beaniness are grassy hexanal and hexanol and mushroomy octenol Lipoxygenase gets its chance to act when the bean cells are damaged and there’s enough moisture and oxygen available: for example, when fresh beans are bruised, or dried damaged beans are soaked or brought slowly to a boil The strong beaniness of soybean products is generally accepted in Asia but objected to in the West, where food scientists have developed techniques to minimize it (see box, p 494) The aroma of cooked beans also has a distinct sweet note, which comes from lactones, furans, and maltol Some beans may be warehoused for years before they find their way to supermarkets or into prepared foods Prolonged storage causes legumes to lose some typical flavor notes and accumulate stale ones ...endowment of the enzyme lipoxygenase, which breaks unsaturated fatty acids into small, odorous molecules The main components of beaniness are grassy hexanal and hexanol and mushroomy octenol... Lipoxygenase gets its chance to act when the bean cells are damaged and there’s enough moisture and oxygen available: for example, when fresh beans are bruised, or dried damaged beans are soaked or brought slowly to a boil The strong beaniness of soybean... The strong beaniness of soybean products is generally accepted in Asia but objected to in the West, where food scientists have developed techniques to minimize it (see box, p 494) The aroma of cooked beans also