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String-beans with Egg

String beans cooked with egg yolks and peanut cream, seasoned with salt and optional grated onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

String-beans with Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil string beans in salted water with a bunch of savory or parsley leaves.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 5 tablespoons of raw peanut cream, 3 egg yolks, and a little salt.

  2. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

  3. If desired, add a little grated onion with the beans.

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 + peanuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  4. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Peanut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the peanut cream into a smooth sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Raw peanut cream
Provides the rich, fatty base that gives the sauce its body and nutty flavor.
String beans
Serve as the main vegetable that the sauce coats.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Egg yolks contain proteins that set with heat and can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats or sits still. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, peanut, cream, egg):

  1. Welsh onionfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, peanut, cream, egg. 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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