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Green String Beans

A dish of green string beans simmered with fat pork and seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break string beans into pieces and soak in cold water for a while.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine fat pork and cold water; cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Add string beans to the pot and cook for 1.5 hours.

  3. If water boils out, add a little warm water.

Serve

  1. Season and serve on a platter with sliced pork.

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. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat pork
Renders fat and flavour into the cooking water, giving the beans savoury richness.
String beans
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they cook slowly in the liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot topped up with water. Long simmering evaporates liquid, and if the pot runs dry the beans can scorch and stick. Adding warm water rather than cold keeps the simmer steady without cooling the pot.

“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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