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Sour Beans

A green bean dish cooked with butter, flour, vinegar, and egg to create a sour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Combine the beans and hot water in a pot.

  2. Cook until soft, about 20 minutes for young beans.

  3. Drain the beans through a sieve and ensure they are perfectly dry.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the vinegar, salt, and pepper to the saucepan and mix well.

  4. Add the drained beans to the saucepan and cook together for a few minutes.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Green beans
Provide the main body and texture of the dish once cooked until soft.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the saucepan base.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the sauce that coats the beans.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the dish its sour flavour.
Egg
Stirred in at the end, it enriches and lightly thickens the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it at the end and removing the pan from heavy heat keeps the sauce smooth rather than scrambled or curdled.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, egg. 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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