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Salad

String Bean Salad

A salad of boiled string beans tossed with French dressing and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

String Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and break the string beans into 1‑inch lengths.

Cook and dress

  1. Boil the beans in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain thoroughly and mix with French dressing.

  3. Let the mixture stand until cold.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves and add a little more dressing just before serving.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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 salad, providing the bulk and tender bite.
French dressing
Adds moisture and tangy acidity, flavouring the beans as they stand.

The step that matters

Drain thoroughly. Excess water left on the cooked beans dilutes the French dressing, so it cannot coat them well and the salad turns watery.

“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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