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String-beans

String beans boiled, drained, and sautéed in butter with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

String-beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the string beans and cut them diagonally into small strips.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water for 10 minutes or until tender.

  3. Drain the beans and transfer them to cold water.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice into the melted butter.

  3. Drain the beans again and add them to the hot butter.

  4. Heat the beans quickly, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  5. Serve immediately, omitting lemon juice if not desired.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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 beans
Provide the main body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and carrying flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the beans.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Boiling time decides the final texture. Undercooked beans stay fibrous and squeaky, while overcooked beans turn soft and dull in colour. Checking for tenderness at the stated time prevents both problems.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, pepper. 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.

More string beans recipes

Canned 17Pickled 11Creamed 9Boiled 6French 5German 3 See all 97 →

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