Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
String Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break off the ends and remove the strings from the beans.
Cut the beans into 1-inch pieces.
Cook and serve
Boil the beans in soft water until tender, about 1 hour.
Add salt to taste.
Drain the beans through a colander.
Serve with butter.
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.
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Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,799 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- String beans
- The main vegetable; boiling softens its fibres until the beans become tender.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving the cooked beans a smooth, savoury finish.
The step that matters
Boil the beans until tender. Heat softens the cell walls of the beans, so they turn tender. Checking them as they cook matters because overcooked beans become soft and mushy.
“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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