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Pickled Beans

Pickled beans are preserved in a salted water solution, stored for months, then soaked and boiled before use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and beans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,030 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Pickled Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Boil the water with salt for 10 minutes, then let it cool.

  2. Pick the beans before they become stringy and place them whole in an earthenware crock.

  3. Pour the cooled pickle over the beans.

Ferment and store

  1. Cover the beans with a piece of wood and a heavy weight to keep them submerged.

  2. Store in a dry place for up to 7 months, rinsing the cloth covering every two weeks in boiling and then cold water.

Prepare to serve

  1. When ready to use, soak the beans for 6 hours, changing the water once or twice, then cut and boil them like fresh 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. Egg + beanstop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans or scarlet runners
The vegetable being preserved; it softens and turns tender-crisp during the long brine storage.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the beans and inhibits spoilage microbes, letting the brine ferment and preserve them.

The step that matters

Keep the beans fully submerged under the brine. Beans exposed to air can grow mold and spoil. A weight and wooden cover hold them under the brine, where the salt and the fermentation keep them safe for months.

“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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