Skip to main content
Main

Fasolakia

A Greek stew of green beans, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, garlic, and parsley simmered in oil.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Time20 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Clean and wash the beans.

  2. Warm the oil in a pot.

  3. Simmer the onions.

Make the stew

  1. Throw in the rest of the ingredients, except for the potatoes, with a little bit of water.

  2. Leave the beans to cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Cut the potatoes into 4 wedges.

  4. Put the potatoes in the pot last.

  5. If needed, put in more water and let the food boil for a while.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

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

  4. Green beans + potatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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 stew and become tender through slow cooking.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften and cook down in the oil.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that combine into the cooking liquid to make the sauce.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens and thickens the stew slightly as they cook.
Garlic
Adds aroma that deepens as it cooks with the onions and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Put the potatoes in the pot last. Potatoes cook faster than the beans, so adding them late keeps them from breaking down into mush before the beans are tender. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets both cook evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, potato, tomato, garlic, parsley, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, tomato, garlic, parsley, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Potato CroquettesIllustrationPotato Croquettes255 recipesIllustration of Green PeasIllustrationGreen Peas229 recipesIllustration of Green Pea SoupIllustrationGreen Pea Soup181 recipes