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String Beans

A dish of string beans cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and optional cream or sauce, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and pepper work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 727 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

String Beans

8 people

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut beans lengthwise once or twice, then crosswise, almost covering them with boiling water.

  2. Add butter and boil for one hour.

  3. Reduce the water to about one-half cupful.

Make the sauce

  1. Blend flour and milk.

  2. Cook until well blended and season.

  3. Add salt during the last 15 minutes.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Saute onion and garlic in lard, add other ingredients, and cook for one hour.

  2. Boil one quart green beans, three pods of okra, and one small red pepper for 35 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pepper, drain the beans, add one teaspoon salt, pour over one cup of sweet cream heated to boiling point, and serve immediately.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

128Calories
4 gProtein
6 gFat
18 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Beet1/2 cup (85g)35
Okra1 cup (100g)33
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chapel, Inie Gage, Mrs. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Tea + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Okra + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + teatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming tender as they simmer in the water.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a silky finish when poured over the hot beans.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and gelatinizes during cooking.
Okra
Releases mucilage that helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Blending the flour and milk. Flour mixed into liquid forms lumps unless it is blended smoothly first. Stirring while the mixture cooks lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce without graininess.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Okrathe original

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

More string beans recipes

Canned 17Pickled 11Creamed 9Boiled 6French 5German 3 See all 97 →

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