Why it works: Green beans and butter work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
To Cook Green Beans in an Hour
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the green beans and place them in a pot with ¾ cup of butter.
Steam the beans for 30 minutes.
Then cover the beans with water and cook for an additional 30 minutes.
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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Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together154 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
- Green beans
- The main vegetable that is cooked until tender in this dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, helping coat the beans with flavour as they cook.
The step that matters
Covering the beans with water for the second cooking stage. Once the beans have steamed, adding water and simmering for another 30 minutes means they can become overcooked and soft if the heat or timing is not watched. Checking for tenderness keeps the texture pleasant.
“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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