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French, String and Wax Beans

A boiled bean dish seasoned with salt, butter, sweet cream, and optionally salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French, String and Wax Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Snap the beans when bent.

  2. String them.

  3. Break off the ends.

  4. Cut into 2 or 3 pieces.

  5. Soak the beans in cold water for 15 minutes.

  6. Drain the beans.

Cook

  1. Boil salted water in a pot.

  2. Add the beans.

  3. Cover the pot.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes for light beans or 1 hour for green beans.

  5. If the beans are nearly dry, do not drain.

  6. Alternatively, cook a piece of salt pork with the beans.

  7. Remove the pork.

  8. Drain the water.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter and sweet cream.

  2. Add more salt if needed before serving.

  3. Serve with cream or cream sauce.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Cream + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

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

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 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

String or wax beans
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender enough to eat.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky coating to the cooked beans.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, giving the beans a rich, glossy finish.
Salt pork
Optionally flavors the cooking water with savory, salty fat.

The step that matters

Drain the beans only as directed. Draining beans that are nearly dry can leave them scorched or dry, while draining too early loses flavor and moisture. Follow the note on whether to drain, and watch the pot as the water cooks down.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Filbertfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pork. 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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