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French Beans

A simple green bean dish seasoned with salt, sugar, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Green beans and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 369 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the ends off the beans and remove the strings.

  2. Cut the beans into 1-inch pieces and soak them in cold water with a little salt.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil with ½ tablespoon of coarse sea salt and 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar.

  2. Once boiling, add the beans and cook until they sink in the water.

  3. Drain the beans in a colander and transfer to a hot dish.

  4. Season with butter, pepper, and additional salt to taste.

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. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Green beans + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Form the main body of the dish, providing the tender-crisp texture once cooked.
Powdered sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to the cooking water, mildly balancing the salt.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries flavour over the cooked beans.

The step that matters

Cooking the beans in boiling salted water. Beans cooked in a rapidly boiling, well-salted pot keep their bright green colour and tender-crisp bite. Overcooking breaks down cell walls and turns them dull and soft, so they should be checked as soon as they sink.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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 french beans recipes

Boiled 29Pickled 12Preserved 9Plain 4Stewed 4Creamed 3 See all 54 →

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