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To Pickle French Beans

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather French beans before they become stringy, without taking off the ends.

  2. Soak them in a very strong brine until they turn yellow.

  3. Drain the brine and wipe the beans dry with a cloth.

  4. Place the beans in a stone jar by the fire, add a little alum, and pour boiling vinegar over them every 24 hours, sealing to prevent steam escape.

  5. In 4 to 5 days, the beans will turn green.

  6. Boil a little mace, whole pepper, and ginger in the vinegar.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  2. Beans + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together609 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, vinegar, pepper, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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