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String Beans and Tomatoes

A simple dish of string beans simmered in a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Beans and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut off both ends of the string beans, string them carefully, and break into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Cook the beans in boiling salted water (1 teaspoon salt per quart) until tender.

  3. Reduce the cooking liquid to about ½ cup.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter, then add the flour, salt, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Stir in the strained tomatoes and cook until smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the beans and let cook slowly for about 15 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the tomato sauce as it cooks with the melted butter.
Butter or fat
Carries flavour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Strained tomatoes
Provides the main body, acidity and flavour of the sauce.
String beans
The main vegetable, softened by boiling until tender.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter before adding tomatoes. Flour must be stirred into the melted fat and cooked briefly before liquid is added, so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, sugar, pepper, flour):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, sugar, pepper, flour. 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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