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Salad

Bean Salad

A salad of boiled green beans dressed with lard, flour, onion, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the green beans until soft, then drain in a colander and let cool.

  2. In a bowl, sprinkle the beans with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the lard in a saucepan, then stir in the flour and chopped onion.

  2. Slowly add the vinegar, letting the mixture boil for a few minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the beans, stir well, and add the cream.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Green beans + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

  3. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 salad and carry the dressing.
Lard
Provides fat for cooking the onion and flour and adds richness.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks with the melted fat.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Cream
Adds fat and mellows the sharpness of the vinegar dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar to the flour mixture. Vinegar must be added slowly while stirring so the flour and fat blend smoothly without lumps. Letting it boil briefly cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the dressing.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, onion, vinegar, cream):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, onion, vinegar, cream. 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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