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French Beans

A preserved bean dish made by brining, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the beans

  1. Make a strong brine with salt and water.

  2. Gather the beans before they have strings and lay them in the brine until they turn yellow.

Pickle

  1. Drain the beans and pour boiling hot vinegar over them.

  2. Seal the jar tightly for one day and night.

  3. Boil the vinegar and pour it over the beans again for several days until they turn green.

  4. Add ½ ounce each of pepper, mace, and cloves to 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
The main vegetable, whose colour and texture change during brining and pickling.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sour flavour.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, warm aroma to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, sweet-spicy aroma to the pickle.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma and flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling hot vinegar over the drained beans. Heat helps the vinegar penetrate the beans more quickly, while the acid works to preserve them and set their flavour. The vinegar should be boiling when poured, as the record specifies.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, vinegar, pepper, clove. 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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