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Sour Beans

Sour Beans is a cooked string bean dish with butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sour Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut string beans into pieces and boil until tender.

  2. Drain the beans thoroughly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Add the beans and cook together for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, beat the egg lightly and stir it into the mixture.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

String beans
Form the bulk of the dish and soak up the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp sourness that defines the dish.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and adds body as its proteins set with gentle heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if the egg is added too early or cooked too long. Beat it lightly, stir it in gently, and serve promptly to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, 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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