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Spanish String Beans

A Spanish dish of green string beans cooked with onions, tomatoes, chili pepper, fat, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions, tomatoes, and chili pepper thinly.

Make the base

  1. Cook the onions, tomatoes, chili pepper, and fat together until golden brown.

  2. Brown the flour in the mixture.

Cook the beans

  1. Add hot water and the green string beans.

  2. Cook for 1.5 hours, adding salt halfway through.

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 + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat or drippings
Carries heat and builds flavour as it browns the onions and tomatoes.
Flour
Browning the flour thickens the liquid and adds a toasted, nutty depth.
Large onions
Caramelise as they cook, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Tomatoes
Break down into the cooking liquid, adding acidity and body to the sauce.
Green string beans
Simmer slowly until tender, absorbing the flavours of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions, tomatoes, and chili in fat until golden brown. Slow browning develops sweet, deep flavours through caramelisation and the Maillard reaction. Stopping early leaves the base pale and flat, and scorching turns it bitter, so the colour must be watched closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, beans, tomato):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, beans, tomato. 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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