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String Beans, Country Style

A creamy string bean dish cooked with butter, parsley, chives, flour, broth, milk, egg yolks, and served with sliced fat pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

String Beans, Country Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the string beans as in the previous recipe.

Cook the beans

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the beans.

  2. Stir in the parsley and chives, then sprinkle with flour.

  3. Toss the mixture and add the broth.

  4. Let it simmer for 30 minutes until moisture is nearly reduced.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk with the egg yolks, then add to the beans.

  2. Combine well and serve with the cooked sliced fat pork.

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. Beans + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Chive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the herbs through the beans.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the beans are coated in a light sauce.
Broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that the beans simmer in and reduce.
Milk
Dilutes and softens the sauce, adding creaminess when combined with the yolks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as it is combined with the hot beans.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; if the beans are too hot when the yolk mixture goes in, the yolks can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Combine well over gentle heat to keep it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, chive, flour, milk, egg, pork):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, chive, flour, milk, egg, pork. 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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