Name: Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 pound yellow wax beans; 2 tablespoons olive oil; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅛ teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon prepared mustard; 4 tablespoons cider vinegar

Why it works: Beans and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

String the yellow wax beans and boil them whole until tender.
Remove the beans and place them on a clean cloth to cool.
Once cooled, transfer the beans to a salad dish.

Make and add the dressing

In a bowl, mix olive oil, salt, pepper, and mustard.
Add cider vinegar to the mixture and stir well.
Pour the dressing over the beans and toss gently.

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.

Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow wax beans: Provide the main body and texture of the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat and carries flavour through the dressing.
Prepared mustard: Helps emulsify the dressing and adds a sharp note.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

Swap the beans

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

Beansthe original
Black-eyed peafits about as well
Chickpeafits about as well
Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, mustard, cider, 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.