Why it works: Beans and ham work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓
String Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
String the beans and break them into two or three pieces.
Cook
In a pot, bring water to a boil and add the bacon or ham.
Add the beans to the pot and boil for 1.5 to 2 hours.
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.
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Beans + hamtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together140 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tender beans
- Main vegetable; long simmering softens them until tender and absorbs savory flavor.
- Bacon or ham
- Adds smoky, salty flavor and fat to the cooking water that carries into the beans.
The step that matters
Boiling the beans for 1.5 to 2 hours. A long, steady boil breaks down the tough cell walls of the beans so they become tender. Stopping early leaves them fibrous, so check for tenderness before serving.
“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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