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Salad

French Bean Salad

A salad of soaked and cooked French beans dressed with olive oil, vinegar, onion juice, paprika, served with lettuce and stuffed olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

French Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the dried French beans overnight in cold water.

  2. Cook the beans slowly until tender.

Dress and serve

  1. Once cold, dress the beans with olive oil and vinegar.

  2. Add a little onion juice and paprika.

  3. Serve the salad arranged with lettuce and stuffed olives.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 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

Dried french beans
Form the bulk of the salad and become tender when soaked and cooked.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the dressed beans.

The step that matters

Cook the beans slowly until tender. Dried beans need long, gentle cooking to soften fully. Rushing with high heat can leave skins tough or split beans while centres stay firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, olive, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, olive, vinegar, lettuce. 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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