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String Beans, Country Style

A sautéed string bean dish with butter, herbs, flour, broth, milk, egg yolks, and sliced fat pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

String Beans, Country Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the string beans as in recipe No. 148.

Cook the beans

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beans with butter, parsley, and chives.

  2. Sprinkle with flour and toss to coat.

  3. Add the broth and let simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. When moisture is nearly reduced, mix the milk with the egg yolks.

  5. Add the milk mixture to the beans and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve with the separately cooked sliced fat pork.

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 + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Chive + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the beans and thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when mixed in, giving it a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the thickened sauce.
Broth
Provides the cooking liquid that simmers the beans until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the beans.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if they get too hot or are added to boiling liquid. Mixing them with milk first and adding them off the heat or at low heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, chive, flour, milk, egg, pork):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, chive, flour, milk, egg, pork. 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.

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