Name: Corn, Tomatoes and String Beans
Ingredients: 1 pound corn; 3 pounds tomatoes; 1 pound cut string beans

Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corn, Tomatoes and String Beans

Ingredients

1 pound corn
3 pounds tomatoes
1 pound cut string beans

Directions

Mix the corn, tomatoes, and string beans thoroughly.
Fill the mixture into cans and exhaust them.
Process the cans the same way as you would for corn and tomatoes.

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.

Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Supply acidity and liquid that give the mixture its base flavor and juiciness.
Corn: Adds natural sweetness and a soft, tender bite to the mixture.
String beans: Add a firmer, chewier texture and fresh green flavor to the mixture.

The step that matters

Processing the cans. Corn and string beans are low-acid vegetables, and heat processing must be long enough to destroy harmful microbes. The record gives no time or pressure, so the cook must follow a tested canning procedure for these vegetables.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, beans):

Sweet potatofits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Okrafits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, beans. 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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Corn, Tomatoes and String Beans