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String Beans

A cooked string bean dish with a brown butter and flour sauce flavored with sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut off the ends of the beans.

  2. Remove strings from the beans.

  3. Cut the beans crosswise in halves.

  4. Cut the beans lengthwise into narrow strips.

  5. Soak the beans in cold water for 30 minutes.

  6. Drain the beans.

  7. Cook the beans in boiling salted water for 1 hour or until tender.

  8. Drain the beans again.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, heat 1 tablespoon of butter or fat.

  2. Add 1 large tablespoon of flour to the pan.

  3. Cook the flour until it turns brown.

  4. Add 1 cup of soup stock or the hot water used to cook the beans.

  5. Stir the mixture until it becomes smooth.

  6. Stir in ½ cup of sugar.

  7. Stir in ½ cup of vinegar.

  8. Season the sauce with salt and cayenne pepper.

  9. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cooked beans.

  2. Simmer the beans slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve the beans very hot.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and then coated in sauce.
Flour
Browned in butter and thickened with liquid to give the sauce body.
Butter or fat
Carries the flour browning and adds richness to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until it turns brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred over heat until browned, which develops a nutty flavour and removes the raw starch taste. Stop too early and the sauce tastes floury; go too far and it turns bitter.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, sugar, 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.

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