Skip to main content
Main

Pickled String Beans

Pickled string beans preserved in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the beans

  1. Layer string beans and coarse sea salt in a jar for 24 hours.

  2. Remove beans, wash them, and place in a kettle.

Pickle

  1. Cover beans with vinegar and add cloves, black pepper, and a little cinnamon.

  2. Heat the mixture through and let it sit in the vinegar overnight.

  3. For the next three mornings, boil the vinegar and pour it over the 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Beans + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
The main vegetable; it is the food being preserved and pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the beans and helps keep them firm during curing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sour flavour.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling of the vinegar over three mornings. Pouring boiling vinegar over the beans repeatedly heats the beans and flavour compounds into the liquid, helping the pickling liquid penetrate. Boiling the vinegar fully each morning keeps the pickle reliably heated, so it should not be skipped or left lukewarm.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, pepper, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

German Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes