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String Beans

String beans boiled and seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, or thin white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off all strings from the string beans and break them into short lengths.

  2. Wash the beans.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the beans in salted water until tender, about 1 to 3 hours.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Season the beans with butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Pour over 1 cup of thin white sauce and simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the beans.
Thin white sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that clings to the beans.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender. Beans need enough time in boiling water to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them fibrous and tough, while the long simmer helps break down their cell walls for a tender bite.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sauce. 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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