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String Beans, English Style

String beans cooked in boiling salted water and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

String Beans, English Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the string beans as directed in the previous recipe.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add a pinch of coarse sea salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the beans to the boiling water and cook until tender, about 5-10 minutes.

  2. Do not cover the pot while cooking to prevent discoloration.

  3. Drain the beans in a colander.

  4. Serve with a piece of butter in the center and another piece on top.

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. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Cooked until tender, they become the main body of the dish.
Butter
Melts over the hot beans, adding richness and a silky coating of fat.

The step that matters

Leaving the pot uncovered while the beans cook. Keeping the lid off lets volatile acids escape, which helps the beans stay bright green instead of turning dull olive.

“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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