Name: String Beans
Ingredients: 1 pound string beans, cut into 1-inch pieces; ½ cup salt pork, sliced thin; 2 tablespoons butter; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Black pepper, to taste

Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

1 pound string beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ cup salt pork, sliced thin
2 tablespoons butter
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste

Directions

Soak the string beans in cold water for 30 minutes.
In a pot, combine the soaked beans and salt pork, and bring to a boil.
Cook until the beans are tender.
Drain the beans thoroughly, then add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

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.

Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

String beans: Form the main body of the dish and absorb flavour from the salt pork and butter as they cook.
Salt pork: Adds savoury, salty fat to the cooking water, seasoning the beans as they simmer.
Butter: Adds richness and a glossy coating of fat to the finished beans.