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String Beans, German Style

A sautéed green bean dish flavored with butter, onion, salt, pepper, sugar, parsley, broth, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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String Beans, German Style

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

String Beans, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add sliced onion, and sauté lightly.

  2. Add the green beans, season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then add parsley and white broth.

  3. Cover the saucepan and let simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the beans, toss well, and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Green beans
Form the main body of the dish and cook down to a tender texture during simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onion at the start.
Onion
Sweetens and flavors the dish as it softens in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the beans.
White broth
Provides the cooking liquid that steams the beans and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Sprinkle flour over the beans, toss well. Flour must be evenly distributed over the beans before the final cook, or it clumps and forms lumps instead of thickening the liquid smoothly.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pepper, sugar, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, sugar, parsley, flour. 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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