Skip to main content
Main

French Beans

Pickled young white runner beans in brown vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,347 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Gather young white runner beans.

  2. Boil water with salt and baking soda.

  3. Plunge the beans into the boiling water for 1 minute.

  4. Drain and wipe the beans dry.

Pickle

  1. Bring brown pickling vinegar to a boil.

  2. Place the beans in a jar and pour the vinegar over them.

  3. When cold, cover the jar.

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 + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Young white runner beans
Form the main body of the pickle, providing a crisp, tender bite once blanched.
Brown pickling vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the beans.
Baking soda
Raises the alkalinity of the boiling water, which helps beans keep a bright green colour.

The step that matters

Plunging the beans for 1 minute. A short blanch softens the beans just enough for pickling while keeping them crisp. Over-boiling breaks down the cell walls, leaving the beans soft and limp in the jar.

“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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes