Skip to main content
Salad

String Bean Salad

A salad of cooked string beans, cucumber, olives, walnuts, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the string beans in salted water until tender.

  2. Let the beans cool.

Assemble

  1. In a bowl, combine the cooled string beans, cucumber, olives, and walnuts.

  2. Mix with your preferred salad dressing.

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 + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

  2. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Cucumber + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together380 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Provide the main bulk and a tender, crisp-cooked texture.
Cucumber
Adds cool, fresh moisture and a crisp contrast to the beans.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor that seasons the salad.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Let the beans cool. Adding dressing or mixing with other ingredients while the beans are still warm can make them soft and dull, and warm beans can cause the cucumber to wilt. Cooling them fully keeps the salad crisp and well textured.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cucumber, olive. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes