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String Bean Salad

A salad of boiled string beans seasoned with salt, pepper, onion, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Wash the string beans thoroughly.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

  3. Transfer the beans to cold water for a few minutes or run cold water over them in a colander.

  4. Drain the beans well.

Dress the salad

  1. Mix the beans with salt, pepper, chopped onions, and vinegar.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the salad and give a tender-crisp texture after boiling.
Onion
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that cuts through the mild beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the beans and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender, then cool them quickly. Boiling past tender leaves the beans soft and mushy. Moving them straight into cold water stops the cooking, keeping them firm and bright green.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, 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.

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