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Green Beans, with Black Butter

Green beans sautéed with browned butter, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Green beans and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 369 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Beans, with Black Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Cook the green beans until tender.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then place on a serving plate.

Finish and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter until it turns brown.

  2. Pour the brown butter over the beans.

  3. In the same frying pan, heat a spoonful of vinegar, stirring it.

  4. Pour the vinegar over the beans.

  5. 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. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Green beans + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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
Form the main body of the dish and provide the tender-crisp texture.
Butter
Browning produces nutty, toasted flavour and adds richness to the beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Melted butter turns brown as its milk solids toast, giving nutty flavour. Heating too long or too hot burns the solids and makes the butter bitter, so watch it closely and remove it once it reaches a deep amber.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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