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Green Beans, Plain

A simple boiled green bean dish seasoned with salt and butter or water drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Beans, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. String the beans if necessary and cut them into two-inch lengths.

  2. Blanch the beans as directed and drain them.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the beans in a saucepan with water, salt, and butter or drippings.

  2. Cook for ten minutes over high heat, stirring occasionally.

  3. Serve very hot, ensuring not to overcook, as this ruins the flavor.

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 + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook.
Butter or drippings
Add fat and richness, carrying flavor across the beans.

The step that matters

Do not overcook the beans. Beans continue to soften after leaving the heat and lose their bright color and crisp-tender texture when cooked too long. Serving them promptly keeps their texture and flavor intact.

“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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