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 ↓
To Boil French Beans
Ingredients
Directions
Cut away the stalk-end and remove the strings from the beans.
Soak the cleaned beans in a basin of spring water with a little salt.
Boil water in a pot, add salt, and then add the beans.
Boil for 15-20 minutes until tender; taste to check doneness.
Drain the beans in a colander and serve whole, adding butter for flavor.
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
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